


Dittany, in Pieces

by SinceWhenDoYouCallMe_John



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Neville, Battle of Hogwarts, Battle of the Astronomy Tower, Brief homophobia, Coming Out, DH-compliant, Death Eater Trials, Drabbles, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Sex, Explicitly Happy Ending, First Kiss, First Time, HBP-Compliant, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Hogwarts Seventh Year, Hogwarts Sixth Year, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Marked Draco, Neville POV, No matter how closely this follows canon I promise you that the ending is happy for them, Not Epilogue Compliant, Pining, Reallly slow burn, Secret Relationship, Slow Burn, Typical HP-related violence, bit of Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-10-15 17:30:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 64,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17533127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinceWhenDoYouCallMe_John/pseuds/SinceWhenDoYouCallMe_John
Summary: You know that fic trope where everything from canon still happens as planned, except your OTP has secret moments strewn throughout, hidden by the familiar standard plot, and you're like, "wow how would all these scenes be emotionally different now if X had met with X and said X before X happened?"This is that trope.





	1. Sectumsempra

**Author's Note:**

> In between writing sprints to keep working on my two main Sherlock WIPs, I stumbled into Dreville and fell down a very deep hole.
> 
> Working on these little scenes as 'breaks' has provided a much needed burnout-blocker. I've got a lot of these all swirling around in my head, up through "8th year," so I'll just post them as they happen :)
> 
> I fell fast and hard for this ship, and I just want to spread the joy!
> 
> Don't worry, they'll definitely fuck by the end of this. In a happy way.

The breathing caught his attention.

Carefully controlled inhales and exhales behind the curtain, fluttering the velvet, standing apart from all the slow, lazy snores in the rest of the room. And Neville had absolutely no idea what came over him when he looked over his shoulder, checked Pomfrey wasn’t still there, and then pulled back the fabric with a thrillingly steady hand.

Draco Malfoy looked as if his body didn’t exist. As if he was simply made up of wool sheets and midnight shadows.

A pulse of fear lanced through Neville’s chest. His palm turned numb. 

Malfoy could scream at him. Could hiss in his face. Could whip out his wand and kill Neville instantly in a puff of emerald smoke. Could ask Neville how his parents were doing since their meeting with Malfoy’s lovely Aunt. Demand to know how many empty gum wrappers Neville had saved up in a drawer.

(No, no. Malfoy didn’t know about that. Nobody did.)

Malfoy’s back was to him. Neville briefly wondered if maybe he was looking down at another pale blonde head, if he didn’t have anything to be worried about except mild embarrassment in front of a Hufflepuff, caught snooping. But then:

“I told you, I don’t need any more fucking calming draught,” Malfoy hissed. 

Neville jumped, took a silent step backward. Stopped breathing. Malfoy’s voice had sounded like the river rocks by the lake when a storm was rolling in. Like thestral bones rattling, creaking together.

The wool blanket slipped down to reveal a bony shoulder, pale from the moonlight flooding in through the highest windows. Neville wondered if Malfoy had always been that pinprick thin. If his expensive robes made him look more filled out in class, in the halls. 

Neville felt as if he could physically crush him with just the pressure of his hand, just the simple weight of his arm, and a shameful blush spread up his neck at the thought. 

“ _Longbottom can’t stop stuffing his face for long enough to listen to the correct password,_ ” Malfoy had announced to half the Great Hall back in third year. It was right after Neville had received his howler from his Gran over Black getting into the castle. Neville remembered sitting there in that silent moment after, waiting for Harry or Ron or someone to shout something equally nasty back at Malfoy. After all, Neville had banished a boggart, had survived another year of Professor Snape, had earned points for _Gryffindor_. And Malfoy was . . . Malfoy.

He’d waited, but nobody had. He remembered the feeling of all eyes on him as he stared down at his plate and put the next bite of food in his mouth.

A sudden ripple of goosebumps flushed up Malfoy’s neck.

Neville wondered why Malfoy was shirtless. Why his breathing, out of all the wheezing and coughs in the hospital wing, had caused Neville to pull back the curtain. Why Neville had even bloody done that in the first place when he was only here to get Pomfrey’s extra gauze for Sprout, since he was helping her plant midnight-blooming varieties for extra credit.

“ _Probably you were supposed to check in on someone there six months ago and you’ve only now remembered,”_ one of his classmates would say. _“Maybe you forgot you were at school and not at home with your Gran in her fancy bed.” “Maybe you’re just too stupid to find the door back out to the hall.”_

All of those were probably correct. How should Neville know if they weren’t.

A sharp sniff brought his eyes back down to the nape of Malfoy’s neck. His hair looked damp with sweat.

“I said _go_ ,” Malfoy said, but it came out like a wet choke. 

The indignity of it all was suddenly so overwhelming that Neville almost apologized out loud. 

(Someone had probably told him once that his voice was high and squeaky enough to sound like Madam Pomfrey’s anyway. Maybe Malfoy wouldn’t even notice.)

But he clenched his fist so he wouldn’t reach down and pull the blanket back up, swallowing Malfoy’s pale, naked shoulder with dark wool. Neville hated the sight of it—the bones so close to the surface of milky-blue skin—as if Malfoy’s exposed shoulder was suddenly the most shameful blotch on Slytherin House, stained red with ink like Snape’s handed back essays. 

As if something like that should make Neville Longbottom, of the House of Gryffindor, clap and cheer. 

But Draco Malfoy belonged in woven robes and expensive silks and fine stitching. It was an undeniable truth; truer than _lumos_ bringing light. Truer than Neville Longbottom forgetting a password.

And Neville hated the fact that here, now, he was embarrassed. Embarrassed for _someone else_ —someone else who had made him purposefully embarrassed nearly every day of his life since he was eleven.

And also, Malfoy could hex him through one of the hospital wing windows and hurl him into the lake and drown him. Could rip his skin apart and fill him with snakes. Could set Snape on him with a cauldron of bubbling potion that would burn Neville’s throat with liquid fire. Could tell the actual Dark Lord that Neville Longbottom was becoming an inconvenience, and at the snap of white fingers, Neville’s pulse would be snuffed.

Neville reminded himself that he was deathly afraid of Draco Malfoy. That he _hated_ him. 

He looked at the bare curve of Malfoy’s ear before closing the curtain.

\--

It was Potter’s doing, apparently.

Neville overheard this in cloaked whispers of the common room, right after he tripped on a footstool that he suspected wasn’t in his way until Seamus’ foot ‘slipped’ near its base. Right after he felt his ears turn red, and he was suddenly unbearably conscious of the way his stomach moved under his shirt as he tried to laugh along with everyone else. 

They were laughing _with_ him, his Gran always reminded him, right after she reminded him that nobody ever used to laugh along with his father. That he never gave anyone a reason to in the first place.

It was Ron and Hermione near the stairs, whispering so loudly Neville wondered if they thought he truly couldn’t hear. That maybe Potter didn’t teach him how to use a spell to hear things correctly during all their DA meetings last year.

Neville caught enough: the prefect’s bathroom, and Myrtle, and so much blood, and Snape. Something about a Half-Blood Prince and a textbook. How Malfoy had been crying.

That stopped Neville’s foot on the second stair. He froze.

The words were completely incomprehensible. He’d seen Malfoy shed fake tears, of course. Trying to get Harry in trouble for this or that. Trying to get Hagrid sacked. But something about Hermione’s tone of voice, and the way Neville suddenly remembered that Malfoy had grey circles under his eyes last week in Transfiguration . . . And come to think of it, Neville couldn’t even remember the last time Malfoy had actually come to class, on time or at all . . .

“Neville.”

He turned. Ron was covering an odd expression on his mouth with one hand, while Hermione looked like she was about to tell a First Year an inconvenient life truth.

“Neville, have you gotten lost?”

Neville wondered if Hermione had thought he was lost when he was screaming curses at Death Eaters in the Hall of Prophecies, shoulder to shoulder with Harry Potter. Winning.

He swallowed. “No.”

Ron’s shoulders quivered. Hermione bit her lip.

“Only, you’ve just started to ascend the stairs to the girl’s dormitories, is all.”

She pointed, as if Neville needed help locating his feet, but he followed her hand and looked down at his own feet nonetheless. 

A floral carpet runner cascaded down the worn stone steps, tinged with gold and pink. He shifted the worn toe of his boot, and heard his Gran’s voice in his head telling him to put a reparo on the damn thing, lest he look like he came from dirt and not the _Longbottom Lineage_. 

(His father never would’ve worn scuffed shoes, apparently. His St. Mungo’s slippers now didn’t have any leather on them to get scuffed.)

“Blimey, Nev, were you trying to go up and see someone special?” Ron laughed.

Neville bit down the unprecedented urge to yell back, " _What if I had?_ " Even he had enough self-preservation to know that he would not want to know Ron's response to that question. 

(Not to mention the fact that the truth of Ron's question wouldn't have affected which staircase Neville took anyway, but that was an entirely separate issue which he would revisit precisely never. And which would probably never require any revisiting in the first place).

Half the common room was suddenly looking at them, homework and conversations forgotten. Harry was giving him a fondly exasperated expression from nearby the fireplace where he’d been expounding on Patronus magic. 

Ginny was listening with rapt attention. Neville wondered if she ever chose to remember their brief kiss at the end of the Ball, or if it hurt her to think about.

Neville gripped the back of his neck and smiled the way he’d practiced in the mirror way back in second year: his “I’m such a doof, what would I do without the rest of you to help me?” smile.

“Old Snape must’ve frightened you more than usual today,” someone suggested.

Neville latched onto it. He couldn’t very well tell everyone that he went up the wrong flight of stairs in quarters he’s lived in for six years because he was trying to imagine what Draco Malfoy’s eyes would look like wet and rimmed with red. Because he was thinking of a pale shoulder with the bone piercing the skin.

“Must have,” he laughed. They were all grinning at him warmly. He was tonight’s enjoyable break from Charms homework and the middle of a War. He grinned with his lips closed so nobody would see his front teeth. “Silly me.”

Ron finally let his laugh out as Neville climbed the correct staircase. It echoed across the stone.

“Remember him in your Gran’s frilly hat!” someone called from the bottom. 

Neville forgot to laugh.

\--

This time, when he looked over his shoulder and pulled back the curtain, Neville had his wand at the ready. 

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see on the other side. Lucius Malfoy in his white mask, flanked by milky orbs of prophecies, shooting curses which ripped through the organs of his screaming friends. The white hot sparks of the _cruciatus_ flying once more towards his vulnerable ribs. Malfoy rearing with fangs like a snake, dripping red blood in smears on white bone, ready to strike. 

Instead, he saw Malfoy asleep on his back. And scars.

They carved into his chest and stomach where the blanket was pulled down, huge long gashes of angry, healing white. They rippled as he breathed, like snakes across skin. Like ivory claws dragging through the snow, seeking throats. 

Neville bit his tongue. The adrenaline pumping through his body felt more palpable than the moment he’d stepped up to Harry and volunteered to come along to the Ministry to steal the prophecy. Than when he climbed on the back of a thestral. Than when he saw Bellatrix Lestrange appear from the shadows, twirling her wand.

(Than the first time he thought his mum was trying to say his name. “ _Neh . . . neh . . ._ ” she was muttering from her bed, her bony fingers twisting themselves raw in the white sheets. Later the nurse told him that she always moaned like that. It didn’t mean a specific word, dearie. Nothing to worry about.)

Malfoy’s ribs looked like a skeleton’s hands jutting up out of the white earth. Like silk stretched over ice. Neville stared, even as he tongue grew numb in his mouth. Even as the threat of discovery burned like fire at the back of his neck. 

He stared, and he tried to imagine Severus Snape’s bare hands cradling Malfoy on the bathroom floor. The blood and leaking water running over his fingers and pristine robes. Tried to imagine long strands of black hair trailing across Draco’s face as he healed him, the way Hermione said Snape apparently did. Neville tried to imagine how anything as beautiful as the elegantly woven stitches across Draco’s chest could have come from Professor Snape’s hands. From his piercing black wand. From his tongue and lips.

Then Neville realized that he’d just called Malfoy “Draco” twice in his mind. Called the horrifying gashes across his bare skin beautiful.

He thought gum wrappers were beautiful, too. And the way a Belladonna drooped towards the earth right before it died.

His Gran must have been right. There had to be something wrong with him. 

And there _really_ had to be something wrong with him when Neville realized he was bending to sit down on the edge of the cot, careful not to pull the blanket too tight across Malfoy’s waist. 

At least he was back to calling him Malfoy by default, now.

Malfoy didn’t even move, and a hot boldness rushed through Neville’s cheeks. This is how Harry Potter must have felt like when he sensed the Dark Lord through the grass, he thought. Trapped in the center of the maze. 

Malfoy flinched in his sleep. Neville realized he could hurt him if he wanted. Could spit in his soft face.

“In first year,” Neville whispered, so softly he could barely hear himself, “you threw away my remembrall. It was right at the beginning of the year, in front of all my friends, and there was nothing I could do. You made a fool of me. And it stuck.”

Malfoy shifted on the thin sheets, and the spike of fear up Neville’s spine made him suddenly realize that it wasn’t the danger he was enjoying now at all. It wasn’t the thrill of potential discovery, or the secret knowledge of Malfoy at his mercy.

No, he just felt brave. He hadn’t realized he could feel brave in moments of his own choosing, when it wasn’t thrust into his face for him to bumblingly deal with and hope to survive.

Malfoy’s left forearm twisted, facing up towards the moonlight. Neville noticed for the first time that it was bandaged, elbow to wrist. He wondered why, until the barest slip of ink spilled out from a gap in the gauze, raised and angry pink lines framing branded black. 

Neville didn’t need to look closer; he suddenly knew it was the neck of a snake.

Neville waited for his entire body to convulse, to heave with disgust, to radiate fury and revulsion and fear.

Instead, he found his pinky finger barely stroking the edges of the gauze. He wondered if Malfoy had covered the Mark himself, or if Pomfrey had found it and hidden it from her own eyes. He wondered if getting it had hurt. If Malfoy had bled. If he was brave enough to meet the Dark Lord’s thin eyes.

Neville looked around briefly, peeling back the curtain edge. Every other student asleep in the hospital wing had goodies or letters of some sort from friends piled next to their beds. 

Nobody else had a curtain around them. Draco’s bedside table only carried a glass of old-looking water, dust-motes swirling on the top. 

“My remembrall seems so far away now,” Neville whispered. “I don’t even remember where it is. You’d love to hear that, if you were awake.”

He watched a lock of white hair fall across Malfoy’s ear, and suddenly remembered catching Harry caressing a lock of Cho’s hair when Neville had been embarrassingly early for a DA meeting. They’d both apologized to him as if he’d be completely disgusted by witnessing any act of physical intimacy. As if he’d be utterly confused.

Neville found himself wondering who had ever caressed Dra—Malfoy’s hair. Pansy, maybe. Some other worthy Pureblood.

(He was a Pureblood, too. He forgot that most of the time.) 

He licked his lips. “You used to make fun of my hair, you remember? And my weight. And my teeth.” He was quiet for a long minute. “I can’t remember the last time you made fun of me.”

The skin under Malfoy’s eyes was sunken and grey. Neville thought about what else he could possibly say, now that Malfoy, for all intents and purposes, was being forced to actually listen. He told himself to think, think, think, just like he always did. He wasn’t sure if it had ever helped.

Pomfrey could walk back in for her midnight rounds at any minute, and he felt time slipping away.

He thought about telling Malfoy how that Mark on his arm meant that Malfoy was actively hoping for the destruction of all the good in the world. How Neville had _hated_ him for six years. Avoided him in the halls. Sprinted from him in his nightmares. How Malfoy was disgusting, rotten, a piece of shameful, Death Eater trash. How Neville hoped he and the rest of them all died incredibly painful deaths.

He thought about hurting him, humiliating him, marking him to let the entire world know that one time, on one night, Draco Malfoy had been at Neville Longbottom’s mercy.

Instead, he found himself picturing how easily Malfoy’s thin skin had been blown to bits by Harry’s wand. How the flesh had been blasted away to reveal plain muscle and blood. Whether any red droplets splashed onto Harry’s face.

“I met your dad,” Neville whispered. He unconsciously touched the place on his own ribs where the _cruciatus_ had hit, where a black mark still lingered which he’d never told anyone else about.

Malfoy whimpered a bit in his sleep, and it made him sound like a little boy. He barely even had hair on his chest, or across his jaw. 

Neville wondered if that whimper was what Malfoy had sounded like when he was crying, and he hated him more than he’d ever hated anyone else on the entire earth.

“Nobody’s ever met my dad,” Neville said. 

(He wondered if Harry would murder him if he walked in and saw the two of them now. If he wouldn’t just see it as a practice round for killing the Dark Lord. Neville letting Malfoy go free because he didn’t have the wherewithal to ruin him when he had a precious chance. Didn’t have the guts.)

Blood rushed through him, and he reached out and touched the neck of the snake on Draco’s arm with his bare fingertip. Draco’s skin was warm.

He swallowed as silently as he could. “Nobody from school.”


	2. Tergeo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I've successfully pulled you into Dreville, welcome back!

“Longbottom!”

Neville flinched, then turned. He wiped the fresh soil on his hands off on his trousers, then remembered that the last four times he’d tried to cast a cleaning charm it hadn’t worked properly at all. But too late now.

Crabbe and Goyle looked surprisingly lopsided without Malfoy leading the way. They looked like two phoenix wings without the actual phoenix body connecting the two. They strode across the grass, two great black and green orbs blocking the sun. 

Phoenix wings was too glorious a comparison to give them, actually. They were like lumpy, mud-covered eels. 

Neville realized he couldn’t remember a single time in six years when the two of them had approached anyone without Malfoy in front of them, let alone approached _him_. Certainly not since the untrue rumor started back in second year that the three of them were the only students who snuck seconds out of the Great Hall after meals. It was as if an unspoken agreement developed between the three of them after that: stay far apart so they don’t all amplify each other’s size. Self-preservation.

But now, here they came, striding with purpose to where he knelt by the flowerbeds on the slope of sunny grass.

Maybe Neville was about to be their first ever try at humiliation without Malfoy leading the charge. He didn’t know whether to be insulted that he was seen as such an easy target, or just sad.

Neville rose to his feet, hating himself that he still felt icy fear in the pit of his stomach at even the _thought_ of Malfoy joining them.

(Harry said Malfoy was spending all his time in the Room of Requirement; nobody had seen him for more than uneaten meals in weeks. Neville wondered if his scars were healed. Malfoy always wore long sleeves.)

“Problem?” Neville said when they neared. He stood up straight, regretted it, then hunched his shoulders. He then regretted how that made his robes feel too tight across his back. 

Goyle raised his chin and sniffed. “Having fun playing around in the sandbox, Longbottom?”

Crabbe laughed with barely controlled glee. “Have you fainted over any plants yet today, Longbottom?”

“Yeah, fallen onto your bottom and fainted any more today, Long _bottom_?”

The absence of Draco Malfoy’s sneer and too-bright hair made a sudden boldness strike up Neville’s spine. Nobody else was around to hear anything being said. 

(He thought of pulling back the curtain, sitting down on the cot, his fingers steady.)

He stuck a hand casually in his pocket and drew out the tip of his wand. “That’s real clever, Crabbe,” he said, proud his voice didn’t stutter. “See, I only fainted once, all the way back in first year, and yet you’ve remembered it all this time. It’s a good memory, that.” 

He turned to Goyle, who looked gobsmacked that Neville had done more than trip over himself in an effort to sprint away. “And you, Goyle. It’s a fantastic play on my name you’ve done there. Really. I’ve never heard it before.”

Goyle lurched. “The fuck’s gotten into you, Bottom? Think you’re all brave now that Potter let you tag along on one of his little playdates to the Ministry?”

Crabbe crunched his face into what Neville suspected was a poorly-learned imitation of Malfoy’s smirk. “Think you can play the hero now that Potter gave you a pity invite, is that it? Want to prove you can remember how to speak?”

Sweat prickled under Neville’s arms. The drying soil on his hands felt like it was constricting his skin. He wished he was caressing the soft tails of a Bulrush, or stroking Squill petals, or watching Knotgrass blades curve their eager faces towards the sun. He wished that the true reason for why he wasn’t currently running away from two armed Slytherins had _everything_ to do with Harry Potter, and nothing to do with the fact that Draco Malfoy was mysteriously not there. 

(Little did these two know that Harry hadn’t talked to Neville in days. Had been busy spending hours in Dumbledore’s office, or tracking Malfoy through the halls, or planning with his friends, leaving Neville to flit between empty seats people had been using for their books.) 

Neville drew his wand from his pocket, attempting to move slowly. 

Goyle immediately shoved the tip of his wand into Neville’s face. Which was ridiculous, because any self-respecting wizard knew that a spell could rebound at such close range. 

And yet, here they were. Neville’s heart betrayed him by picking up speed.

“Watch it, Longbottom.” Goyle attempted to spit on the ground, but failed to produce any actual spit. “Lion shite.”

“I’m not afraid of you, Goyle,” he said, in a surprisingly calm voice. “Go on, hex me. Hex me right now.”

“Is that a command? Or a beg?”

“Whichever you like,” Neville said. “Do it. Hex me.”

Neville was somewhat surprised that the world continued to flow around them. That students on their way to classes across the grass cared absolutely nothing for Neville Longbottom having a wand shoved in his face. Cared nothing for the fact that Neville Longbottom wasn’t exactly losing this fight, either. At least, not yet.

Crabbe giggled and stepped closer as Goyle sneered, flinging his wand aimlessly in the air as if he was casting useless spells. “When was the last time you deflected a hex, Longbottom? The last time you cast a spell that wasn’t watering your little plants?”

He kicked at the fresh blossoms Neville had been planting in the full sun. One of the flowers whimpered.

Goyle’s wand pressed into his cheek. “Potter’s not here to save you now.”

Neville clenched his jaw. “Who said I needed Harry?”

Goyle laughed. “He’s off with his friends doing _real_ work, not just touching the pretty flowers, waiting for the bell for next meal, playing around in the dirt and—”

“ _Expelliarmus!_ ”

Goyle’s wand flew from his hand, whistling through the air.

Never, in six years of schooling, had Neville ever been more enraged to hear Harry Potter’s voice.

He wanted to scream as Crabbe’s wand was also hurled off into the grass. As the two Slytherins backed up, shock on their faces, and as Neville found himself surrounded on three sides by Harry, Ron, and Hermione, wands raised.

“It’s fine,” he tried to say, but it came out in a weak mumble. “It—it’s f-fine, they were just—”

Hermione looked back at him with a wash of pity in her eyes. “Don’t pay any attention to them, Neville,” she said, in a tone of voice Neville had heard her use with crying first years.

His palm sweat on his wand, and his fingers shook. 

Harry stood so still it was as if he was made of stone, forged out of Hogwarts itself near the gargoyles of the ramparts. The wind blew back his robes.

“Leave him alone,” Harry said in a terrifying whisper. “Go find Malfoy to follow around like the pathetic dogs you are, and leave Neville alone.”

Neville swallowed hard. “Look I . . . Harry, I don’t need—”

Ron hushed him. “We got this, Nev. These arseholds won’t even fight. Look, they’re already running.”

Ron started to laugh as Neville watched Crabbe and Goyle back away from the group, stumbling over each other and huffing as they tried to retrieve their wands. Neville wondered what he would have had to do to make them run away like that; if he ever could have.

All around them, the rest of the students went on with their days as normal. Nobody even looked twice at Harry Potter having to rescue Neville from the two Slytherins everyone knew Malfoy only kept around for their size, nothing more. And Neville was the closest to their size, out of anyone. And even he couldn’t make them run. If anything, he’d practically invited them over.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were just turning towards him, casually slipping their wands back in their pockets, and Neville was schooling his face into the gratitude he knew he was supposed to feel, instead of indignant fury, when a new voice rang out across the courtyard. It closed up Neville’s throat.

“Potter!”

They all turned. Malfoy stood between two columns surrounding the grass, out of uniform in just his shirt and black trousers with his arms crossed over his chest. He took a step into the sunlight as Crabbe and Goyle immediately fell into their usual formation behind them, sniggering at each other at the prospect of a fight.

Harry raised his wand with a steady hand, and the air of the courtyard hummed with electricity. Students stopped and stared.

Neville suddenly realized that the grey circles beneath Malfoy’s eyes were mostly gone. That his hair was slicked back into place. His clothes looked ironed, and his white shirt shone in the sun.

(But Neville couldn’t remember if Malfoy’s skin had always been that pale. If there wasn’t a small curve in his spine when he walked, like he was protecting his chest.)

Harry growled. Neville wondered if they’d properly seen each other since the bathroom over a week ago. “Piss off, Malfoy. Go back to your dungeons. The sun’s bad for your skin.”

Malfoy smirked. “Taking a quick break from scheming to murder the Dark Lord to come out here and protect your friend from these two brainless idiots?” he gestured behind his back to an oblivious Crabbe and Goyle. Malfoy lazily fiddled with his wand. “Seems a bit beneath the Chosen One to sprint to Longbottom’s aid, if you ask me.”

Harry’s wand hand jerked. “ _Don’t_ you dare try to—”

“What’s the matter, Potter? Afraid that Weasley here and your Mudblood friend aren’t enough anymore to make you look special? Have to keep someone like Longbottom around, too?”

“ _Expelliarm—_ ” Harry started to cry, but just as quickly, Malfoy lifted his own wand, his fingers suddenly fierce in their grip, and a completely wordless shield flew out from the tip of his wand with a crackling spark of white heat. Harry’s half-formed spell bounced off and reflected into the clouds. 

The courtyard froze. Hermione sucked in a quick breath.

“Trying to disarm me so you won’t lose your Sundays to detention, too?” Malfoy asked, his voice eerily quiet in the newfound calm. “Actually following Snape’s advice for once in your life?”

Harry hissed through his nose. “I’m surprised you’re even spending this much time out in the sun. Don’t you have something urgent to attend to in the Room of Requirement?”

“Oh, really? Do I?”

“You think he’ll find you useful, do you? Think he’ll tell you you’re so clever, the most loyal of his followe—”

“Enough,” Malfoy hissed. “You pathetic, arrogant, self-righteous—”

“Something to go and cry over with Myrtle since no one else will listen to—”

“I heard you weren’t so reckless when you were face to face with my father, Potter.” Malfoy took a step closer. A vein in his neck pulsed. “Care for another visit? Black couldn’t accompany you, of course, but I could still easily arrange—”

“ _Don’t_ mention Sirius’ name, you fucking snake. You—”

“Harry, he’s not worth it!”

Neville was shocked to hear the sound of his own voice cutting through the fight. Ron and Hermione looked back at him as if they’d completely forgotten he was there. 

Harry didn’t take his eyes off Malfoy with his wand half-raised in the grass, but Malfoy’s grey eyes were pinned to Neville’s face, an unreadable expression in his brow. 

If Neville didn’t know better than to think Malfoy could ever be caught off guard, he would think it was shock—an unsettling flash of confusion paved over with pure disgust.

(Disgust, Neville could handle, of course. Maybe even shock. But Draco Malfoy was _never_ confused, not once in six years. An imaginary burning spread through Neville’s fingertip which had touched the bare Mark while Malfoy slept. He closed his fist.)

“Stay out of this, Neville,” Harry murmured. He gripped his wand harder.

A gust of sharp wind blew back Malfoy’s hair. It almost looked as if he was going to fall over with the gale. 

Neville wondered if he’d always looked that fragile, or if Neville was just simple enough in his own head that one glance at Malfoy’s bare shoulder had forever transformed him into a white feather instead of a slithering giant—the great, white snake with green eyes stalking the halls, whom Neville had hid from behind suits of armor nearly once a day for years.

Malfoy looked at Neville for another long moment, then lowered his wand. Crabbe and Goyle took a step back. “None of you are worth it,” Malfoy hissed under his breath. “Not worth my fucking time, having a schoolboy fight in the yard.”

He spat in the grass, a true, echoing spit, and shook his head as he pocketed his wand. The three of them turned to go, as if they hadn’t just turned their backs on one of the most powerful wizards alive, whose wand was still raised.

“Harry,” Hermione whispered.

His shoulders relaxed. Ron put a hand on the nape of Harry’s neck. Hermione’s fingertips gently pressed down the tip of his wand.

All of a sudden, Neville felt incredibly intrusive, as if he had just come upon a private moment and clumsily burst his way in. It was Harry and Cho in the Room of Requirement times one thousand. It was the fragile shiver of pale skin over Malfoy’s naked rib.

He rubbed the back of his neck, wondering how everyone around him stayed consistent, predictable, and yet meanwhile he waffled between fighting beside Harry Potter against actual Death Eaters, and needing Harry Potter to come to his rescue in the middle of the sunny school lawns. Rescue him from two wizards who would have needed ten minutes just to think of a hex to cast.

“Er, thank you,” he muttered. He cleared his throat and hoped he wasn’t blushing as three heads jumped and turned his way, as if they all had no idea who’d just spoken.

They relaxed at the sight of him. Harry shot him an exhausted looking smile. “Of course, Nev.”

Neville tilted his head towards the school. “I’d best uh . . . well, I’ll need to get new supplies to replant—”

“You don’t have to stay, Neville,” Hermione said in her gentlest voice. “We were on our way to the library anyway. Dumbledore’s research.”

She made it sound as if Neville replanting a flower was equally as important as Albus Dumbledore’s top secret assignments for Harry Potter. Maybe she was remembering the Gillyweed in the midst of the tournament. Maybe she was remembering the time she walked in on him alone in the greenhouses in third year, when he was singing a song to a Moly bud to get it to bloom, and she told him it was sweet, how the plants liked his voice.

(“ _Squibs do Herbology,_ ” his Gran had told him just that summer. “ _Neville, dear, you must improve in something like Transfiguration like your mother. Think of the Lineage_.”)

Neville was halfway back across the grass, nearing the shaded walkway towards the safety of the greenhouses and studiously avoiding everyone’s stares, when he felt it: 

_Magic._

A fluttering, warm brush of magic rolled across his thighs. It gripped the fabric of his trousers in a trembling pulse before settling across his hands, weaving under his nails.

Neville flinched and looked down, and his mouth fell open at the sight of the drying soil on his trousers and palms wafting away into the air, as if simply carried away by the small breeze. The black cotton of his trousers gleamed spotlessly in the sun. His skin sparkled. 

He looked up and whipped around in a circle, only to see a completely empty slope of grass. For a creeping, embarrassing moment, Neville wondered if he’d actually cast the spell himself and already forgotten. If some passerby hidden in the shadows of the corridor wasn’t witnessing him glancing around like an idiot, searching for another person after he himself had confidently declared, “ _tergeo_.”

But then he saw it; there _was_ a student hidden in the shadows. 

Neville froze as a pair of grey eyes peered at him from the darkness, unblinking for a moment that seemed to stretch time itself. Neville heard his own swallow. Fear sat like ice in his throat.

Malfoy stared at him, and he ran a hand through his hair, a brief shock of white, as the other hand gracefully slipped his wand back into his pocket in a practiced move.

(Maybe Harry would have had the courage to ask Malfoy if the twist on his lips was hatred, or revulsion, or disgust. If it was pity. But Neville kept his mouth shut as he stood stock still in the grass; his Gran was always nervous that the Sorting Hat would belatedly transfer him into Hufflepuff mid-year. Neville never could blame her.)

Far away, somebody laughed. The bell sounded. The earth turned. 

Neville sucked in a breath and jerked forward, the ice in his throat forgotten. 

“Th-thank y—” he tried to spit out, but Malfoy was already leaving, disappearing down the hallway so quickly that the breeze ruffled his white shirt, clinging soft silk to skin.

Neville blocked the sun with his hand and squinted. He saw Malfoy quickly touch his left arm under his sleeve just before turning the farthest corner, just a brief press of his palm. Then he was gone.

“You lost, Longbottom?”

Neville whipped around so quickly it was as if he’d been caught breaking every Hogwarts rule at once. He felt red rush through his cheeks, and he awkwardly gripped his wand just to have something in his hand.

The Ravenclaw girl he somewhat recognized from Potions gave him a knowing smile.

“Greenhouses are that way, you know,” she said, unbearably gentle. 

He shoved his wand in his pocket, feeling foolish, but he missed the hole in the fabric and dropped it into the grass.

“Right, er, thanks. Of course,” he said, bending to pick it up, but she bent at the same time to help him, and their heads knocked, and she dissolved into a fit of giggles.

“You’re a gem, Longbottom,” she said, tucking hair behind her ear. She winked at him as she walked off, already jogging to catch up to her group of friends all grinning his way.

And Neville just stood there, unable to return her words, or her wink, or her laugh. And he found himself wondering how Malfoy would have cursed him into eternity if they had bumped heads bending down towards the grass. Then he remembered that Malfoy never would have bent to pick up his wand in the first place. Would never willingly get closer to him than arm’s length.

(He was closer, closer than arm’s length in the dark on his cot. Could see the goosebumps.)

Neville ambled towards the greenhouses with his head hunched down, trying and failing to forget the soft flutter of Draco’s magic against his skin. How it had seeped inside him without his knowledge, and against his will.

How it had felt like he imagined holding hands would feel in the dip of his dirt-stained palm. 

Warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up that I'm writing this as a fun side project, and am therefore doing little to no research for this fic. While I'm pretty sure my spilled blood would come out in green and silver (tinged with Ravenclaw blue), I'm also sure that my memory of spells, timeline, characters, and other general HP facts is not 100% perfect. Forgive me my magical errors and writing sins. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Locomotor Mortis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I mention this fic is a slow burn? It's a slow burn.
> 
> Also I hereby acknowledge that I am knowingly mixing film and book canon randomly and at will. I also know that the scene in this chapter canonically exists before the bathroom, but my memory lied to me, and by the time I learned of my memory's betrayal, it was too late.

The Hogwarts halls were never truly silent. 

The ceaseless noise became obvious in the dark: magic hummed through the stone, and ageless ghosts moaned their whispers. Far off, the Forbidden Forest crunched together its branches and vines in a rustling groan, followed by the thwack of the Whomping Willow chasing a bird. The moving staircases creaked.

Neville found that he enjoyed it; he felt as if the soft, padding echo of his footsteps was seeping into the groundwork of the castle, forever etched into the foundation by magic and time. It was as if every growing, creeping, sunkissed thing alive was trembling in excitement as he slowly walked past, letting him know that they were growing impatient in their long wait for the dawn.

It was an odd thing—sneaking out of the dormitories far past curfew only to aimlessly walk the halls, his hands in his pockets. 

It wasn’t as if he had any particular reason to do so; he wasn’t Harry Potter and his friends on some gravely important mission which would affect the course of world peace. He didn’t have a personal vendetta against the curfew rules, or a reputation to prove, or mischief to manage. He didn’t have a special someone to meet for secret embraces in the long grass. 

No, he just . . . walked. Because he could. 

Because the new wand Gran had purchased for him at the start of that year still felt like a stranger in his palm, eerie and uncertain. 

Because he missed his dad’s wand, the way it had connected to his very soul in the Department of Mysteries. The way it had always seen through his stuttering, and his failures, and his melting cauldrons and botched charms, and it only ever saw . . . him. Frank’s son.

But that wand was gone, now. Probably swept up in pieces along with the rest of the rubble at the Ministry and tossed away in a bin—vanished into sparkling, clean nothingness as if it had never once jammed out a Death Eater’s eye through a white mask, or helped Neville cast a simple _lumos_ for the first time.

In the darkness, he imagined that his new wand’s ochre-stained wood looked _almost_ the same as the old. If he squinted, and held it away from the moonlight, he could almost pretend.

But Neville didn’t cast any spells tonight; he kept his wand hidden deep in his pocket, under his robes. He took careful footsteps down the corridors which skirted along the grass, out of the prying eyes of portraits lining the main great halls. He didn’t once stumble or trip.

The wind felt good and clearing against his face, and even though the freezing air made the black spot on his chest ache, he relished it over the choked firesmoke and rich velvets of the Gryffindor Common Room. The late night lovers kissing by the smoldering embers, and the Hermione’s of the world still up studying for exams, and the Harry’s of the world still scheming to save all of wizardkind. 

In the hallways, all alone, he let the darkness cover his skin, shielding him from all that was terrifying, or bad.

Sometimes, he remembered the days of Dumbledore’s Army—sneaking through the hallways with giddy excitement and burning purpose, passing into the Room of Requirement with their heads held high. A room filled to the brim with blue wisps of patronuses. Hands patting each other’s backs. Harry’s green eyes sparking light into every corner.

Sometimes, he remembered a spider. Mad-Eye’s harrowing stare as the spindly, black legs twitched in pain on the ancient desk. Neville’s knuckles turning white.

Sometimes, he remembered sneaking through the very same halls in first year, shaking with fear, afraid he would get lost and die of starvation in the twisting corridors, but determined, so _determined_ to warn Harry about Malfoy’s plan with the dragons . . . so filled with _direction_.

He didn’t care to remember Malfoy scaring him in the forest; how he wet his own pants. His nightmares usually remembered those moments for him.

Neville sighed. He knew these nighttime walks were nothing but a waste of time—just an excuse to feel like he was _doing_ something instead of lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, listening to the snores of his housemates as they happily slept away.

He was better than this; better than pitying himself all alone in the moonlight, or feigning some dangerous mission even though he was only bound to be caught and thrown up in detention. And Harry would have absolutely no use for him if he was in detention forever, and then where would he be?

He noticed his shoulders were hunching, and he straightened them out as he turned back towards Gryffindor Tower. It was very dark, and he wasn’t scared.

And that was precisely when a hiss of voices froze him to the spot in a spike of terror.

“This is ridiculous. I don’t need you to come after me like a—”

“Stop this instant, Mr. Malfoy.”

Neville clapped a hand over his mouth. His heart exploded in his chest. Before he could consciously think, he threw himself into the nearest dark alcove, half-hidden by a suit of armor. Footsteps boomed their ghostly echoes down the halls, until suddenly, appearing around the farthest corner, Neville laid eyes on Draco Malfoy, tailed by Severus Snape in the starlit shadows.

Malfoy wrenched away his sleeve from where Snape had been gripping it and huffed in disgust. “You don’t own me,” he hissed. “You think I’m still just your student? That you can command me?”

The smack of Malfoy’s body slamming into the cold stones reverberated through the walls. Snape’s pale hands gripped him in the moonlight like white claws, digging into Malfoy’s shoulders. Neville held his breath.

“Draco,” Snape said, calmly, as if he was giving instructions at the beginning of class. “I suggest that you listen to me, unless you’d like to know how a body bind feels. Or else, by all means. Be my guest and continue this nonsense. I doubt the Dark Lord would be pleased to hear that you had to be subdued like a first year child . . .”

“You wouldn’t dare. My father—”

“Is in Azkaban, regrettably. As we both know. And which is the reason why I must unfortunately spend my time speaking with you instead of doing something _useful_.”

Neville suddenly realized he wasn’t even gripping his own wand. That he was standing there vulnerable and defenceless, like an idiot. That the two of them could simply turn just a few degrees from where they stood, and squint through the darkness, and catch sight of Neville’s body illuminated in the shadows for all to see. They could grab him by his robes, drag him across the stones, and throw him at the Dark Lord’s feet in mere seconds. They could peel his soft skin from his body, strip by bloody strip. 

He suddenly wished, more fervently than he’d ever wished before, that he knew how to make himself invisible. That he could just hold his breath, and shrink his stomach and legs and arms, and fade away into nothing.

But the two people he feared most on the entire earth, more than even the Dark Lord, truly thought that they were alone. They didn’t even try to calmly whisper as they spoke, nose to nose.

“I won’t let you do this,” Malfoy spat. “You can’t get away with this.”

Neville wondered what Snape’s eyes looked like that up close; he’d never seen. Then he marveled at the fact that Malfoy could be standing tall, now, looking Professor Snape straight in the eye without a flinch. Malfoy—the boy whom Neville had watched run away snivelling from a fight, or cower on the ground in a whining heap. 

He desperately wanted someone to tell him whether or not that made Draco Malfoy brave.

(Because how could he tell on his own? Neville himself wasn’t brave. No, Neville was still utterly terrified of that snivelling, whimpering boy he’d seen cowering on the ground in a heap after a fight. Because of course he was. It was truer than Ravenclaws getting the highest marks.)

Neville could practically hear Snape’s raised brow. “Do what, exactly? Help you? Assist you? Come to your aid, which you clearly so desperately need—”

“ _Steal_ this from me,” Malfoy said. He shoved with a grunting heave against Snape’s chest, but it got him nowhere. Snape’s grip must have been fiercely strong.

Nevertheless, Malfoy writhed. “Won’t let you take this from me. I was chosen for this. He trusts me—”

_Voldemort_ , Neville suddenly realized, shocked at the way his mind clung to the naked, forbidden name, just like Harry always did.

“He wants to see you fail,” Snape said, disgust in his voice.

“I won’t.”

“You already are. Shall I remind you of your lovely trip to the bathroom three weeks past?”

“That wasn’t—don’t try to pin that on—”

“Draco,” Snape spat, with such ferocity that Neville’s knees went weak. He gripped the cold stone wall behind him with a clammy palm.

“Listen to me,” Snape went on, but Neville’s eyes widened as Malfoy finally pushed Snape off him with a burst of strength, causing Snape to trip backwards on his robes. 

Malfoy strode down the corridor, a black suit clinging to his frame. His hair was ruffled and out of place, loose strands falling into his eyes. He swept them back.

Malfoy was coming closer, Snape on his heels. Neville was going to be found out in a matter of seconds, he knew. He was going to be hexed, hauled away, spat on and killed. He was going to be—

Snape suddenly slammed Malfoy into the wall so hard that Neville heard the walls themselves groan. Malfoy swallowed a whimper of pain in his throat, and Neville hated himself for thinking that it was brave of him, not letting Snape hear his cry.

“You fool,” Snape hissed. “I am offering you a path to walk on. I have _sworn_ to help you. To protect—”

“I don’t need your stupid protection. I don’t need—”

“I made the _Unbreakable Vow_.”

Neville gasped.

Never, in all his years, had he heard of someone actually making an Unbreakable Vow. He hardly even knew they were still real, beyond the realm of fairy tales and myths. And _Snape_ had apparently made one. To protect _Draco_ . . .

He squeezed his eyes shut. _Malfoy_. Not Draco. Malfoy.

He thought of Snape’s hands lifting him out of the bloody water. Pale scars.

“That was your decision, not mine,” Neville heard Malfoy say, but his voice was thinner now, less raging. Neville wondered if, for once in the history of time, he had something in common with Draco Malfoy: they were both completely surprised.

Silence followed. Neville desperately wondered if the two of them could hear the harsh beat of his blood in the sudden quiet. He begged the castle to groan, the birds to cry, the wind to shriek, for _something_ to cover up the shaking breaths he was trying to take from where he stood pressed into the corner, freezing metal and stone against his cheek.

Finally, he heard Snape take a step back. Neville peeked one hesitant eye around the suit of armor. 

“This discussion is not finished,” Snape said, in a voice so quiet Neville had to piece together the words.

Malfoy didn’t say anything as Snape took one last, seething look at him, then Snape turned and strutted off in the opposite direction, his robes trailing out behind him in a heaving, black cloud.

Malfoy stood tall. He held his chin high and kept his arms at his sides, just until Snape turned the farthest corner back to the dungeons. 

And then, right before Neville’s very eyes, Malfoy sank to the ground, his face hidden in his hands.

Neville stared.

It was a position he had taken countless times in his own life after chance encounters with Draco Malfoy out in the Hogwarts halls. After Malfoy scared him in the forest, or made fun of his mum and dad, or put a leg-binding curse on him, or called him a squib after he screwed up another Potion right under Snape’s hooked nose. 

After every one of those times, Neville had kept his head held up as high as he could, slunk through the castle until he could find an empty corridor, and then sunk to the ground with his head in his hands, too.

It was the silence that always grounded him. The stillness of the stone floor. Sometimes, the weak, forgiving bend of blades of grass.

But seeing Draco Malfoy doing it looked all wrong. 

His limbs were too long, and his suit was getting filthy and wrinkled on the stone ground, and his hair trailed over his fingers like ribbons of white snow. His long spine arched, and his knees bent up by his thin shoulders.

He didn’t make a sound. 

Neville watched him sit there for what felt like hours, thinking of nothing but the fact that the rest of the world might have ended since Malfoy sat down, and Neville wouldn’t even know it, because he hadn’t taken his eyes off the curve of Malfoy’s ear.

(“ _You always did get so fixated on the unimportant things_ ,” his Gran had said to him, holding him by his shirt collar, that one afternoon when they’d run into Professor McGonagall in Diagon Alley. And the Professor had had the immense kindness to relay Neville’s entire ordeal with Trevor to his Gran, detail for detail. And the two women had laughed about it together, and Neville’s remembrall had filled with smoke in his hand, right before he remembered to laugh along, too.)

Apparently, right now that unimportant thing was Draco Malfoy’s ear.

Malfoy’s ear looked harmless. It looked weak, almost pathetically ordinary. It hadn’t changed at all since Neville had last looked at it in the hospital wing.

Neville remembered the first day of flying lessons first year, when Malfoy called him a fat arse in front of the whole class, and he suddenly couldn’t believe that such a pathetically ordinary person had made him feel so humiliated. So filled with shame.

(Malfoy pushed Snape off him. Looked the Dark Lord in the face. Knelt at his feet and bared his arm.)

(Malfoy whimpered when Fred and George beat him to a pulp on the Quidditch field, his arms thrown up over his head. His wand forgotten.)

And then, with a burst of movement, Malfoy stood up. 

He sprang to his feet with a set jaw, quickly spelling the dust and wrinkles from his suit with a whispered charm. He ran a hand back through his hair as he effortlessly smoothed it into place. The pieces of himself rearranged into a black, steel statue, not a bone out of alignment.

Neville’s feet had turned numb, and his neck was aching from where he’d been ducking behind the metal. He waited for Malfoy to take a breath, turn the same direction as Snape, and then walk back towards the Slytherin common room. He waited for his chance to sprint back to Gryffindor tower, shake Harry awake, and tell him everything he’d seen and heard so that Harry could save the world. 

He waited and waited.

But, Malfoy didn’t turn. He sniffed once at the air. Flexed the fingers of his right hand. His eyes peered down the black corridor like two pinpricks of light in the dark void.

Malfoy began to walk straight towards him.

Of course, Neville thought. Of course, _this_ was how his heroic time in Dumbledore’s Army would be completely erased, because the entire wizarding world was about to fall at the Dark Lord’s feet as the Death Eaters tortured Harry Potter’s secrets out of Neville Longbottom, one by one. Maybe Malfoy would even cast the first curse, just for old time’s sake.

(But Neville held up against Bellatrix though, didn’t he? Didn’t he?)

Malfoy stopped in his tracks, not ten feet away. Neville willed his own mind to kindly shut up. His lungs to stop moving.

Malfoy’s nostrils flared. His fingers twitched. He took one quick glance around in the dark while Neville held his breath, wondering how the fuck he’d managed to give himself away, if Malfoy was about to start spewing hexes everywhere in sight, if this was the end . . .

Then Malfoy shook his head once, biting the inside of his cheek. He turned down the nearest hallway, mere steps before Neville’s alcove, and disappeared out of sight.

Relief rushed through Neville.

He waited until he could no longer hear Malfoy’s footsteps echoing through the halls, then he counted to two-hundred and fifty in his head, and then he finally stepped out of the alcove on numb feet.

His body was shaking. He sucked in a deep breath of air, tried to crack his neck, rolled his shoulders—

Only to have his back slammed into the wall, and his vision go grey.

Hot breath hissed in his face. A hand fisted the front of his sweater.

“ _You_ ,” Malfoy growled.

Neville went limp.

He forced himself to keep his eyes open, and tears sprung to the corners. The stonework cut into his spine, and Malfoy shoved him even harder. “Potter put you up to a bit of spying tonight, did he? Thought you could sneak up on _me_ and not get caught?”

Malfoy’s grey eyes were raging in the loose slants of moonlight through the dark, while drops of spit flew out of his mouth and landed on Neville’s brow. An angry blush spread over Malfoy’s cheeks, trailing down the long lines of his neck.

Neville stared down at him, conscious for the first time that Malfoy was shorter than him, now, and he realized that he’d never seen him look so unhinged before. So imprecise.

He struggled to speak over the pressure of Malfoy’s fist against the base of his throat.

“I wasn’t . . . H-Harry didn’t—”

“Ahh, thought you’d get some of the glory all to yourself then, Longbottom? Run back to tell him all your pretty secrets? Doing the dirty work yourself, for once?”

Neville pushed his knees and thighs forward, trying to give himself more room for leverage. Malfoy’s patent leather shoes scraped across the stone floor. They grunted in unison; Malfoy’s breath puffed on his cheeks like mint and ice.

“Harry’s got nothing to do with this,” Neville grunted. Gasping, he grabbed Malfoy’s thin wrist in his hand, squeezing the bones until he heard them crack, but Malfoy didn’t even flinch. 

Neville had the sudden, burning realization that he could easily overpower Malfoy if he wanted to. He could shove him off in three easy steps. He had no _idea_ why he wasn’t doing it. He wondered if Malfoy was aware of these same things. If he thought Neville was even dumber than before. More useless.

“Really,” Neville said, breathless now. His head throbbed. “Harry doesn’t . . . I don’t even know where the hell he is. I didn’t know you would be here. Malfoy, honestly.” 

At Neville’s words, the odd, flaming spark fizzled out of Malfoy’s eyes. They looked pale and cold—utterly flat. Neville realized in a shocking, brilliant burst that that unhinged spark from before had been fear.

Now, though, Malfoy just smirked—the same sneer Neville had seen countless times before. It was startlingly familiar, and Neville wondered whether he should be proud or ashamed that Malfoy apparently immediately took him at his word about Harry.

Malfoy’s grip loosened. “Out roaming the halls for a midnight snack, then?” he quietly asked in a mocking tone. He sniffed as his lips curled. 

It was like being back in second year; it was strangely comfortable.

Malfoy huffed at him when Neville didn’t answer. “Get lost going from your bed to the bathroom? You want to relive fifth year? Let me bring you in for another detention? Umbridge may be gone, but I’m sure we could find someone who would be equally as _interested_ in your being out of bed . . .”

And then, despite all of Neville’s self-preservation, despite his entire life spent becoming invisible, following the rules, being the harmless, obliging center of amusement. Despite every ounce of wisdom in his body . . . Neville laughed. 

Malfoy jerked back at the sound, his mouth curling in disgust. 

“Something strike you as funny, Longbottom?”

Neville clamped shut his jaw and forcibly relaxed against the stone behind him. He realized belatedly that he was still holding Malfoy’s wrist in his palm, but he didn’t move his hand away. Malfoy’s skin was growing damp and warm where Neville touched him; his fingers curved loosely around the wool of Neville’s robes.

“Would you believe me if I told you I was just going for a walk?” Neville asked, proud that his voice stayed steady.

“People like you don’t risk a curfew detention just to go for a bloody walk.”

Neville calmed himself, suddenly intensely aware of the silken press of Malfoy’s suit against his own robes; the sharp lines of expensive fabric, and the shadows across his face. Their faces were so close, he could see Malfoy’s pale eyelashes fluttering with the faint light from the stars. A spot of missed stubble along the edge of his jaw. Grey circles under his eyes.

“People like me?” Neville asked. “What does that even—”

But Malfoy shoved himself away with a huff of frustration before Neville could even finish, leaving Neville barely propped up against the freezing wall. 

“Laughing after being caught spying by someone who could have you killed,” Malfoy said under his breath, almost to himself. He shook his head out at the darkness, not meeting Neville’s eyes. “Should haul you right now to the steps of St. Mungo’s, if I don’t decide to bring you to _him_ instead.”

Neville swallowed hard. He was surprised to notice that his hands weren't actually shaking. Neither one of them was reaching for their wand. Malfoy could have obliviated him several times over by now; he had to be aware that Neville heard the conversation with Snape. But his wand stayed tucked away. 

“There’s not a lot of laughing in St. Mungo’s,” Neville finally said, too quietly.

The raw truth of his statement turned the air thick and murky, and Malfoy only seemed to be able to manage a half-sneer. “What, mum and dad aren’t having a grand old time in there? I imagine they’d be smiling away without the conscious knowledge of the Dark Lord returned.” He jerked his chin at Neville. “Without the knowledge of how disappointing you turned out.”

“I imagine they’re laughing about as much as your dad is laughing in his cell,” Neville said, pleased at the sharp bark in his voice.

Malfoy flinched just enough for Neville to catch it as it passed across his pale face. Then, to Neville’s worsening confusion, a nearly invisible smile lifted the corner of Malfoy’s lips before falling away.

“Getting a bit of a mouth on you, Longbottom,” he said. It was a tone of voice Neville had never once heard Malfoy use before. He adjusted the front of his suit with practiced hands, tugging down on the perfect cuffs. 

Neville just shrugged. The back of his neck prickled with sweat despite the cold breeze.

He wondered why Malfoy wasn’t striding away. Why he wasn’t sending off some sort of message to report Neville out of bed and then slinking back down to more important things in the Slytherin dungeons. 

But when Malfoy didn’t move for nearly a minute, when he kept looking oddly out into the dark, Neville stepped forward.

“Why didn’t you use your wand?” he asked.

Malfoy jumped, as if startled, then covered it over with a bored shuffle of his feet. “My wand?”

The Draco Malfoy that Neville knew for the last six years would never have repeated such a stupid question. It caught Neville off guard. It should have made him brim with delight and victory, but instead it left an odd, pitted feeling in his stomach.

“Just now. Catching me here, when you knew that I’d . . . Why grab me? Why didn’t you use your wand?”

An unreadable look passed over Malfoy’s face before he turned down his lips and sniffed, his arms crossed over his chest for the first time all evening—the haughty stance Neville was far more used to than Malfoy staring into the darkness, shuffling his feet.

“Well it worked, didn’t it?” Malfoy sneered. “Unless you’ve already forgotten that I overpowered you?”

“I could have thrown you off me,” Neville said. 

Malfoy huffed, opened his mouth, but nothing more than a scoff came out. Neville wondered if Malfoy’s body wouldn’t just disappear inside his if he got too close, if he wouldn’t crush him.

(Hold him. If Draco’s chest and shoulder blades would be warm through the suit, just like his forearm had be—)

Merlin. No. Neville was stupid. _Stupid_.

“What the hell are you still looking at?” Malfoy snapped, breaking him out of his thoughts.

But Neville didn’t flinch. “Just odd seeing you—you—not jump at the chance to use a hex, or an . . .” he trailed off, sudden fear pricking up his spine.

“Or?” Malfoy asked dangerously.

The moment hung between them. Neville could hear the steady, thin rasp of Draco breathing, the way he carefully controlled his inhales and exhales, everything planned and precise. It occurred to him somewhere around five minutes ago that he’d never been alone with Draco Malfoy for this long, and neither had he ever seen Draco be silent for this amount of time. Standing still, just . . . waiting.

Maybe Draco spent hours being silent and still when he was alone, when there wasn’t a Gryffindor or a Harry Potter or a third year somewhere nearby to torture. When there wasn’t an audience to gloat before, pride hissing from his mouth like basilisk venom. _My father . . . my father . . ._

(Is in Azkaban. Might be getting the Kiss.)

Dra—Malfoy was walking away from him, back towards the dungeons. His suit reflected a burst of moonlight through a gap in the corridor columns, and he was muttering under his breath in a seething snarl. Something about how Neville was an idiot, and pathetic, and stupid, and wasting his time. How he was a blood traitor. How he should be gotten rid of along with the rest of them.

(Neville was fairly certain that’s what Malfoy was saying, wasn’t he?)

And then it dawned on Neville that he had just spent more alone time with Draco Malfoy than possibly anyone in Gryffindor _ever_ had, in the history of the world, and Neville knew he was Marked, and now he was letting him walk away without injury, without any questioning, without even a _fight_.

“ _I was chosen_ ,” Malfoy had hissed in Snape’s face.

_Chosen for what?_

Neville took a stumbling step forward, nearly tripping on the stone. A blinding rush of adrenaline pierced through him, more palpable than the Department of Mysteries. 

“What are you planning to do?” he called through the darkness at Malfoy’s back. Malfoy didn’t even break stride. “What were you chosen for?”

Malfoy’s wand was in his fingers before Neville could even finish the words. He flicked it over his shoulder, sightlessly, wordlessly, and Neville barely had time to try and foolishly duck before the leg-locker curse smacked him in the thighs, sickeningly reminiscent of six years ago, tears on his round cheeks.

“Who is he?” Neville called out, desperately, nearly toppling over, because for some reason, he needed to hear the words, hear Draco say—

“You know who he is,” Malfoy said over his shoulder, softer than Neville would have predicted. Malfoy slowed his stride just before rounding the farthest corner out of sight, and his voice echoed oddly across the starlit stone. “You know what I am.”

Then he was gone. Neville stared at the black end of the corridor until the earth started to tilt.

He tightened his stomach and windmilled his arms, trying to avoid the humiliation of falling down onto his face in the dark in the middle of an empty hall, lying there helpless for somebody to find. Burning with shame even though nobody would be able to see (for the first few hours, at least. Until dawn.)

He couldn’t remember the countercurse. He’d forgotten it years ago. Maybe he never even knew.

And then, without thinking, he calmly stepped out with his right foot to break his fall. 

Malfoy’s curse was so weak that it was broken without any effort at all. Without any magic.

Neville stood there, his mouth half-open in shock, completely upright with his legs fully apart. And Draco’s magic clung to his thighs, wrapping around his calves. Draco’s presence lingered in the air, the fresh, dark scent of his clothes.

(Neville didn’t correct the name in his mind—just this once.)

And Hogwarts hummed and sighed as he walked back to his bed. Faces in paintings whispered to him that he was breaking the rules. 

He didn’t wake up Harry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for coming back :) Your comments are ridiculously appreciated and valued.


	4. Sopophorous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back!
> 
> If you want to enjoy some real life Dreville before or after reading, give this delightful interview a watch [HERE.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD7AWzrMPCY)

For the thousandth time in his unbelievable life, Neville stared down into a cauldron that was the exact opposite color and consistency of what it was supposed to be.

He’d thought he was finally done with this inevitable descent into humiliation; the end of required Potions at the end of fifth year had ranked in the top three days of his life, right beside the first time he finally showed magic as an eight-year-old, and winning the House Cup for Gryffindor in first year.

And then Slughorn had to come along, bumbling in his ridiculous robes, and realize halfway through spring term that oh _no_ , it appeared Professor Snape didn’t test you on Draught of Living Death, even though he most certainly _should_ have, and no fifth year education would be complete without a test of this _standard_.

Neville had never hated Professor McGonagall before in his life until she listened to Horace Slughorn’s stupid, unnecessary plan and said yes. 

So here he was, preparing to be verbally eviscerated over a cauldron, nearly one year after the day he thought he’d kissed goodbye to Potions forever.

It figured.

He scanned the ingredients list up on the board with a sinking feeling, mentally checking off each one and coming up short, over and over. He craned his neck to get a good view of Hermione’s cauldron a few rows ahead; she was already finished with her Draught of Living Death, which was steaming and silken and the perfect shade of lilac, clear at the center. She stared out the window with her fingertips curled in her hair, silently muttering what appeared to be a full recitation of all her notes from NEWT-level Transfiguration.

He looked at Harry’s next; it wasn’t perfect, a little lumpy on the edges, but it looked fine enough. Actually, it looked infuriatingly better than Harry had ever done in Potions all the years before, and Neville marveled, for the millionth time, that he wasn’t just blindingly, obsessively, ragingly jealous of Harry Potter each second of his life. 

(But he wasn’t, and that was the shameful thing, at least according to his Gran. Neville needed to aim _higher_. Look at who he shared a _dorm_ with the last six years. Is he still uninspired?)

Luna’s potion also sat quietly bubbling, and she had moved onto decorating the outside of her cauldron with intricate moving paintings of something that appeared to be a dolphin with a dog’s head. Neville spent five seconds trying to figure out why the hell Luna was even in the room with them, then gave up. 

She just tended to appear, and you went along with that. Even Slughorn had apparently accepted that by now.

But oh, right. Neville was right in the middle of failing.

He glanced around one last time to check, and saw that every other visible cauldron looked perfectly adequate for this—the only time in Hogwarts history where sixth years had been _called back_ to brew _one potion_.

Neville looked back at his own cauldron, sweating under his arms, and he scrunched his nose at the putrid smell. Now, it was a horrifying shade of green-tinged brown.

“Aw, yikes, mate,” he heard whispered to his right. Dean was peering into Neville’s cauldron with a look of half-amusement, half-horror on his face. “Cor, Nev, how’d you manage to get it that color?”

Normally, Neville would laugh along at this point. He’d been at Hogwarts failing Potions classes for too many years to still get worked up and emotional about it. But for some reason, lately, he couldn’t bring himself to chuckle at the mundane little quips of his daily life. It was as if he’d taken a veil off his face, and looked around him in horror, and realized that everything was sharper, blacker, than what it had appeared to be for the last six years. That everything was shades of dangerous grey.

(And he told himself that he had absolutely no idea when this all started. That it definitely did _not_ correlate with watching Draco Malfoy sink to his knees in an empty corridor, silently holding his head in his hands. To Draco Malfoy hexing him badly on purpose.)

Neville shrugged; he was getting quite good at that, he found. “Dunno, mate. I followed all the steps, but it just—”

“Clearly not!” Seamus laughed in a whisper, leaning back to join in. “Christ, mate, or maybe you did, but the potion knew it was _you_ making it anyway, and it knew it wasn’t supposed to work.”

That got a giggle from Lavender Brown, as well as an eyerole-stroke-smirk from Hermione, who Neville assumed probably still had scream-inducing nightmares of the precious few seconds right after Neville dropped the prophecy, before it shattered to the ground.

The rest of the Gryffindors went back to either daydreaming or finishing their potions. Neville would have joined them, were it not for the flutter of black robes out of the corner of his eye.

Neville promptly forgot that he’d been purposefully _not_ looking to his left for the past half hour.

He looked.

Malfoy was sitting directly across the aisle from him, the farthest row in the back on the Slytherin side. Neville could have reached out and touched his desk, if he wished.

But he did _not_ wish. 

He had absolutely no reason to care that Malfoy was sitting there, or that he was back to wearing his Slytherin robes instead of a suit, or that a strand of pale hair was hanging into his eyes, soft and ungelled. And Neville certainly no reason to dwell on that now that he knew he was about to be humiliated over a Potion which a gifted second year could probably brew.

And yet . . . he watched the way Malfoy methodically stirred his potion in a clockwise motion. The way the thin bones twisted in his wrist. The way his long legs stayed absolutely still from where he perched on his stool.

He’d come in late. Neville had waited for Slughorn to rip Malfoy a new one for bursting in once everyone had already begun, but instead, he’d only given a disappointed hum and blandly welcomed him to class, to which Malfoy had silently sat down and set up his ingredients without even glancing once at the board to check the instructions.

Neville always forgot that Malfoy was good at Potions. Not even just good—he’d been taking on NEWT-level brews since back in fourth year. 

And Merlin, Malfoy used to gloat in Potions class—strut around and puff up with praise under Snape’s favoring eye, lord his success over all the stupid Gryffindors he was forced to share a classroom with, call everyone else brainless, not deserving of magic.

Now, though . . . Neville watched him out of the corner of his eye, frowning at the way it seemed Malfoy was staring at a bare section of his desk instead of his cauldron. Everyone else’s sleeves were rolled up like usual, Neville’s included. Malfoy kept his down, his cuffs fastened. He didn’t once look at another person.

A few rows ahead, Crabbe and Goyle whispered with Pansy Parkinson, something which was causing them to snicker and glance at Luna every few minutes. They’d clearly saved an empty seat next to them on the aisle for Malfoy, and yet he hadn’t taken it. Actually, Neville couldn’t remember the last time he _hadn’t_ seen Malfoy just sitting alone.

“Five minutes,” Slughorn called from the front of the room. He bounced on his toes. “I can’t wait to see what our Mr. Potter has concocted . . . as—as well as the rest of you, of course.”

Neville couldn’t even be nervous; it wasn’t as if he didn’t know what was coming, whether he enjoyed it or not. He suspected even Snape had gotten bored of their usual script by the end of last year, and Slughorn would probably fall right into it without even knowing the lines in advance.

Neville watched him slowly start to snake along the rows from the front of the room, and he sat back in his seat and forced himself to relax. He thought about whether he should stop off in the library to finish his Charms essay first, or go straight to the greenhouses. About whether he should owl St. Mungo’s to make sure his mum’s hair had been recently washed. 

(He thought about the golden stubble on Malfoy’s jaw. Whether it would feel as sharp as it looked. How he woke up the other night with the ghostly weight of Malfoy’s fist against his throat. How he never told Harry.)

Someone coughed next to him.

Neville thought about how Potions hadn’t mattered one tit back in Dumbledore’s Army. He thought about the Aconite he would get to plant this weekend for the full moon, and what he should get his Gran for her upcoming birthday. He tried to remember the last time Harry had said more than hello to him over rushed meals.

(Malfoy’s tired voice, _you know what I am_ , and the way his fingers had fisted furiously into Neville’s robes.)

Someone coughed again, this time louder, followed by a clearing throat.

Neville looked over idly, wondering who was choosing to be here doing this ridiculous assignment when they could plead sick and beg off to visit Pomfrey. As he turned his head, the soft cough happened one more time, and Neville froze.

Malfoy wasn’t looking at him, but his throat bobbed as he swallowed. 

Neville was just about to wonder why Malfoy of all people would prefer to be seen coughing and weak— _common_ , Neville could imagine him saying—rather than simply cast some sort of charm on himself to clear his throat, when Malfoy reached his arm out on the desk, palm up, and opened his fist.

Three Sopophorous beans lay inside, cradled in the pale lines of his palm.

Neville stared. He couldn’t put his finger on why his mouth felt so dry. Why his skin was too hot, with shivers down his arms.

Malfoy didn’t even look at him, didn’t so much as blink away from the stirring of his cauldron with his left hand, but all the same, Neville was suddenly intensely aware that the beans in his palm were meant for him to see, and him alone.

Malfoy coughed one final time, just the barest grunt of breath from his throat. It sounded so ludicrously human, so utterly average, Neville found himself realizing that he must have believed Purebloods didn’t even cough up until that moment.

(Purebloods . . . except himself. He coughed that one time in fourth year during Divinations, and he sent a teacup flying from Trelawney’s hand, smashing it to pieces as she wept over the shards.)

Somewhere in the classroom, Slughorn moaned a disappointed wail and tutted before vanishing someone’s cauldron with a sad pop.

Neville tore his gaze away from the pale fingertips of Malfoy’s hand. He looked down at his own cauldron, which was now turning glittering orange, and saw that his own three Sopophorous beans had rolled under one of his cauldron’s legs after he finished cutting them—that they never even made it into his Draught in the first place.

Shame burned his cheeks. Shame and something else. He lurched forward to pick the beans up so quickly he nearly knocked his entire cauldron to the ground, and he heard the barest chuckle from beside him in response. Or at least, he thought it was a chuckle. It could have been a huff, or a sneer, or a curse.

He held the beans hesitantly over the cauldron in his hand, hoping to Merlin that adding them this late wouldn’t just blow everything up.

Miles away, Slughorn was patting Harry on the back with an apologetic smile. “You’ll get ‘em next time, my boy,” he was saying, his voice oddly emotional. “Just an off day. We all have them.”

Keeping his fist aloft, Neville risked a glance at Malfoy beside him. 

Malfoy’s eyes were still glued to his own potion, the intricate twist of his wrist as he stirred, but subtly . . . so subtly Neville almost wondered if it was just a shiver . . . Malfoy nodded. 

Slughorn was three students away. Neville didn't have time to question where he was placing his trust.

(In a Malfoy.)

(In a Death Eater.)

(In Draco.)

Neville's heart raced in his chest, pounding with adrenaline and hope for the first time _ever_ in a Potions lesson at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, as he finally dropped three Sopophorous beans into his potion, watching them trail out of his palm. 

He held his breath as his cauldron fizzled. It whistled twice, smoked, and then utterly transformed into a burst of lilac before settling on a crystal clear solution, perfectly simmering. 

It was even clearer than Hermione’s.

And that was when Professor Slughorn stepped straight up to Neville’s desk, like a Slytherin green orb blocking out every ray of light.

“Mr. Longbottom,” he said nervously. “What a pleasure, I’m sure. Now, I’ve been advised already by my colleagues that you might have a bit of an issue, so let’s just see what we can salvage before we—”

But he stopped. 

The entire class froze, every head turned Neville’s way (except for the one on his left, but not like he noticed . . .)

Neville finally risked a glance up at Slughorn’s face, his eyes trailing up miles of robes to the mortarboard hat, and Slughorn’s expression was a mix between disbelief and personal offense.

“Mr. Longbottom,” he said, so softly students were holding their breaths to hear. He gave a terribly uncomfortable grin. “Now, now, don’t tell me we need to have a discussion on the intellectual ramifications of cheating?”

Malfoy shifted beside him. Neville thought he could see him holding his left forearm under his desk—clutching it, as if he were in pain.

For some undefinable reason, Neville sat up straighter. “And how, exactly, was I supposed to have cheated?” he asked, then added, “Sir.”

Shocked whispers rippled through the class. Hermione hissed his name in concern. Malfoy released a puff of breath through his nose and stared down at his cauldron.

Neville focused on that reaction the most.

Slughorn bit his lip as a bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. “Tut-tut,” he said over the echoing whispers. “Cheek, I’m afraid, will not make up for sheer incompetence, nor lack of ethic.” He surveyed the class, puffing his chest. “Now, I happen to know, old and duddering as I may be, that your cauldron resembled a bright orange sludge not five minutes past. And yet, here we have a perfect finished product . . .”

Neville wondered how red his own cheeks were turning, if Malfoy was noticing. It was one of the stupidest thoughts he’d ever had. 

When Neville didn’t say anything, Slughorn harrumphed. “My suggestion is, dear boy, that you happened to watch and copy the movements of . . . Miss Granger, say. Her rather insufferably perfect potion would be a nice one to work off, given the options. Care to fill in anymore gaps?”

(He thought of sitting down on the cot, pushing Malfoy off him in the shadows, standing his ground when the _cruciatus_ hit, the curve of an ear—)

“There’s no reason why Hermione’s potion should be insufferable,” he said steadily. “She followed your directions and teaching. She did exactly what you wanted.”

Slughorn’s brow raised in an unreadable expression. The room was thick with silence.

Neville briefly considered smashing his own head into his Potion just to punish himself for his stupidity, or maybe leaping from his seat and hurling himself out of the window—he never could get the hand of flying.

But he wasn’t brave enough to stick his head into a Draught of Living Death. And their classroom was in the dungeon, windowless and underground. 

And also, for some ungodly reason, Neville didn’t want to leave Malfoy behind to feel guilt over Neville’s social suicide. As if he himself hadn’t been the direct cause of Neville’s various social suicides all the years before. As if he would have even felt guilty. 

Slughorn shuffled his feet. He looked like he wanted to say two hundred different things, his mouth opening and closing on a soft hinge, before he finally turned to Malfoy’s desk, tapping the edge with his wand as if Malfoy was lost in his head. Or a dog.

“You, Mr. Malfoy,” Slughorn said. “Since you chose this seat, courtesy of arriving late to my class, do you care to enlighten me on our Mr. Longbottom’s sudden affinity for Potions?”

Neville was too horrified to be relieved that he didn’t just get five-hundred points taken away from Gryffindor on the spot.

Malfoy slowly, every so slowly, finished stirring his potion. He elegantly set down his wand and fixed the sleeves of his robes, then sat back and finally regarded Slughorn with one of the most casually offended expressions Neville had ever seen.

“That’s _our_ job now?” he sneered. “Babysitters of the Gryffindors so they don’t snog each other over sharing the homework answers? I thought that was meant to be _your_ job.”

Slughorn appeared flustered, but his squinting eyes blazed. “Mr. Malfoy, control yourself this instant. That is no way to represent your good breeding, or our house—” 

But then, to Neville’s surprise, Blaise Zabini suddenly stood up from his desk, drawing everyone’s eyes. 

“Professor,” he said.

Slughorn spun around, nearly knocking Malfoy’s cauldron from his desk, and awkwardly wrung his hands. “Now, now, Mr. Zabini. Surely this can wait while we get to the bottom of this. A student caught cheating must be taught a lesson, you see.”

Blaise levelled Neville with a look of complete disgust. “See, that’s just it. I was watching Longbottom, Professor. You know, it’s always a good show how he manages to mess up the Potion. Never know what you’re gonna get.”

The rest of the Slytherin side sniggered, including one or two Gryffindors, and Hermione let loose a very shrill shush. 

Slughorn looked like he thoroughly regretted not just vanishing Neville’s cauldron and immediately moving on, rather than making a show of it all. He smiled politely. “And?”

Blaise’s expression fell. “And . . . honestly, he didn’t do anything. Nobody talked to him. He just . . . brewed it. Added in all the ingredients. I don’t know what to tell you.” 

When Slughorn only stared at him in silence, his mouth half-open, Blaise raised one of his hands and shrugged. “Look, man, it’s a mystery for the ages. Only you shouldn’t let loose on Draco for not giving a shit about Longbottom. It’s not his fault he got stuck next to him. And not when it looks like he just brewed a Potion that looks better than your example.”

The rest of the Slytherin’s ooh’d, and a few of them tapped Blaise’s back as he sat back down, inordinately pleased with himself.

“Thank you for that thrilling elucidation, Mr. Zabini,” Slughorn said, sweating even more now across his brow. 

When he turned his gaze back to Neville, Neville realized he’d forgotten this entire ordeal was even about him. He forced himself to sit tall in his seat, shamefully conscious of the way his robes felt too tight across his shoulders.

“Well, well,” Slughorn said, his voice unreadable. He adjusted the mortarboard with a clammy looking hand. “It appears that, despite copious warnings from my predecessor, I stand corrected. You did, in fact, brew a textbook Draught of Living Death.” His face pinched a bit, then he reluctantly added, “And fifteen points to Gryffindor. For academic integrity and . . . improvement.” 

He then strode past Malfoy’s potion with only the briefest glance and nod, and that was that.

Gryffindor erupted. The end of class suddenly became a swarm of happy faces turned towards Neville, eager and brimming. Hermione looked like she wanted to hug him and cry. Dean and Seamus clapped him on the back and laughed. Harry looked oddly relieved, then shot Neville a grin.

Neville didn’t register any of it. Instead he turned to Malfoy, who had packed up his belongings twist as fast as everyone else and was already halfway out the door.

Neville followed him, then grabbed his wrist behind one of the dungeon columns just outside. Malfoy’s skin was smooth and cool, and Neville felt a brief stab of fear that he’d just gotten him dirty with leftover soil, as if _that_ made sense.

“Wait,” he gasped, nearly tripping over himself. “I need to—”

Malfoy turned, as if he wasn't surprised in the least that he'd just been grabbed. He left his wrist in Neville’s hand. They faced each other.

For the briefest of moments, Neville thought he saw something like openness on Malfoy’s face. Like he was simply waiting to hear what someone else had to say to him. What _Neville_ had to say.

It stopped Neville in his tracks, and he hesitated, but Malfoy only looked steadily back at him, waiting, his eyes focused and open.

(He looked like that when he was asleep, too, except that was a stupid thing to say, because a person didn’t sleep with their eyes open, and the arrangement of Malfoy’s face right now was one of the unimportant things, like Trevor and Herbology marks.)

Neville wanted to pause time. He wanted to run and get a pensieve so he could perfectly extract his memory of this moment, because he’d never before noticed that Malfoy’s eyes were the color of Aconite petals at first light. He’d never noticed because he’d never seen them not squinting, filled with rage. 

(Filled with fear.)

Neville ran his other hand self-consciously through the shaggy bangs hanging into his face, trying to smooth them over the way Malfoy seemed to effortlessly be able to do. His heart raced, terrified every moment that this meeting would suddenly turn into a replica of their last, with Neville’s back slammed against the wall, and Malfoy’s spit in his face.

But Malfoy just waited. He didn’t move a muscle.

“I don’t know why you . . .” Neville finally started, then he changed his mind. “You didn’t have to help me like that. Not when—”

But suddenly, Malfoy’s face scrunched into his familiar, disdainful sneer. His spine lengthened, as if he was looking down his nose at Neville even though Neville stood taller. He ripped his wrist away.

It was only a half-second of horrified confusion before Neville felt the presence of Ron and Hermione on his sides, surrounding him like the bars of a cage.

Before any of them could speak, Malfoy sniffed and glared at a spot somewhere over Neville’s left shoulder. 

“You shouldn’t be thanking anyone for being such a pathetic excuse for a Pureblood,” Malfoy spat. “No wonder Snape always looked at you like you’re an embarrassment. You can’t even—”

“That’s _enough_ ,” Hermione said. She subtly moved in front of Neville, and Neville fought the urge to push her out of the way. Ron growled. “Piss off, Malfoy. Go back to your—”

But Neville didn’t hear the rest. He stared at Malfoy, waiting to catch his gaze, and then held it when he finally did. 

“You don’t even believe what you’re saying,” Neville said softly, almost awed, as if a great realization was dawning on his shoulders. Ron and Hermione froze and stared at him. Malfoy didn’t even blink. “And you’re wrong. I’m not an embarrassment. I’m not—”

“You arrogant prick,” Ron suddenly cut in, as if Neville hadn’t even been speaking. Ron held up his thumb and forefinger close together with a sneer. “Pick on someone your own size. You know, someone small. Someone _tiny_.”

Merlin, Neville wanted to disappear into the ground. He knew it wasn’t what Ron meant, yet still, he hunched his shoulders, tried to shorten his spine . . .

Malfoy’s eyes briefly traced up his body, sizing him up. They seemed to linger near what felt like his chest and middle, and Neville felt nauseated as he sucked in his stomach.

Then Malfoy turned his gaze to Ron, as if looking at Neville had been only a blink.

“Are you holding up fingers to show the height of the stack of coins in the Weasley vault?” Malfoy shot back, and Hermione was probably too distracted holding Ron back from punching Malfoy in the jaw to notice that Malfoy gave Neville one last, unreadable look before turning and striding down the hall, oddly anticlimactic without Crabbe and Goyle flanking him.

His expensive shoes clacked on the stone.

“He’s not worth it,” Hermione was begging to Ron, calming him down. 

“That bloody snake—it’s my _family_ —”

“Ron, please. Let him be miserable on his own. It isn’t worth the detention . . .”

They forgot Neville was standing there—that he had been the first recipient of the insults to start with.

Harry appeared, then, because of course he did, just as Malfoy started down the top of the nearest staircase, his robes swirling behind.

“He’s headed there,” Harry breathed, pure focus beaming around him. “He’s heading there. I’m gonna—” and he raced off after Malfoy before finishing his thought.

“Harry stop!” Hermione called. “You’ve got to stop this!”

But Neville tracked a blond head until it was out of sight down the stairs, and then they were gone.

The next time Neville looked up from his feet, the corridor was empty. Not a classmate in sight.

Neville sighed and went back to pick up his books from his desk, alone in the emptied out, echoing classroom. His palm that had gripped Malfoy’s wrist felt clammy and stiff, and he _hated_ it. Hated the memory of Malfoy's suit pressed against his thighs. The unwanted brush of his magic.

And he suddenly realized, cradling his books in front of his body, that for the first time in his life, he actually wanted to _be_ Harry Potter. 

He wanted to have the weight of the wizarding world on his shoulders. He wanted to have to face the Dark Lord himself. To be famous. To cast the killing curse. He wanted to be the Chosen One, the bringer of Light, the champion of the Order fighting bravely against the Dark.

So that he could know where Draco was going, too. 

So that he could follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I solemnly swear that this ship is consuming my life.
> 
> Your comments are all so appreciated, and I really thank you for leaving them :)
> 
> Up next: It is a truth universally acknowledged that all angsty enemies-to-lovers HP fics, of any ship, must have an unexpected midnight talk on the Astronomy Tower.


	5. Vermillious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy, my beloved fellow Dreville-appreciators <3
> 
> Also, heads up for mentions of suicide in this chapter (though brief).

White masks flew at him, searing the air, slicing through his skin until he bled, and bled. And Hermione’s scream echoed through the black, dripping corridors as the glass orb smashed to the stone; the shards cut his fingers until they were nothing but strips of bloodied tendon and clumsy bone, dropping the ancient whispers to the floor where they withered and died. And there was a wand pressed into his cheek, a white fist at his throat, greasy black hair choking his lungs over a cauldron, fingers pinching his stomach and the sharp stink of urine . . . Until _there_ , suddenly, the warm brush of silver-green magic across his thighs, and a gentle sniff through a nose, like a laugh, only it wasn’t . . . And then the white masks faded blearily from his vision into the mist, the pools of blood vanished, black silk covered his wounded hands as he cried—

Neville woke himself up. 

It wasn’t worth staying asleep to see the rest of the dream play out; he knew the major beats by heart at this point. Eventually his Gran would show up, weeping over the pieces of his dad’s wand clutched in her fingers. Gum wrappers would fall from the ceiling and burn in flames, shrieking in pain. He would fall on his face with his legs locked together in front of the whole Great Hall, only he would be naked—

Well, it wasn’t worth spending his conscious minutes going through the familiar nightmares, either. He’d save it all for the next night.

(That last part was new, though, he admitted to himself. The brush of magic and the sniff, the cool black silk, and he didn’t yet know how it would permanently alter the course of nightmarish events, if it even would, but Neville definitely did _not_ want to find out. No thank you. It didn’t mean anything at all.)

He sighed and slipped out of bed, pulling on his robes in the dark silence with a resigned detachment. Normally, his nighttime walks were born out of not being able to sleep in the first place—he kept that bottle of Dreamless Sleep hidden beneath his mattress for nights like this—but . . . for a reason he couldn’t pin down, tonight didn’t feel at all like a “night like this.” 

So he slipped on an old, torn sweater he’d never be caught wearing in the daylight in a million years, the one which felt like an embrace, and he cast a half-arsed silencing charm over his shoes, and he slipped out the door, leaving behind oblivious snores. He took the stairs carefully, one at a time, wrapping his arms tight around his chest even though it was still warm from the Common Room fire . . .

“—impossible, Harry. If he’d taken the Mark, Dumbledore would _know_. He wouldn’t let him _stay_ here. You can’t keep going on like this—”

Neville froze, one foot poised in the air halfway through the Common Room.

“But this is _Malfoy_ , Hermione,” said Harry’s unmistakably vexed whisper. “If anyone could figure out how to join Voldemort and still keep up plausible deniability to the rest of the bloody world, it’s _him_.”

“He’s a Malfoy, and he’s garbage, and he’s slimy as fuck, I’ll give you all that,” whispered Ron now, “But . . . Hermione’s got a point. Do you not trust Dumbledore to see?”

Harry grunted. “But he’s _up_ to—”

“We know,” sighed Hermione, who sounded almost at the point of tears. “He’s ‘up to something,’ alright, alright. But. . . oh, Harry . . .”

And that’s when Neville realized, one foot still balanced up in the air, that Harry, Ron, and Hermione, who he guessed were seated under the Invisibility Cloak in the farthest window alcove, from the direction of the voices, had absolutely no awareness that Neville was in the Common Room at all. 

The thought filled him with nausea, then worsened as he realized that he should feel invigorated, thrilled, positively _adventurous_ over the fact that he could slip past _the_ Harry Potter completely unnoticed. Harry Potter, who was in the middle of a _war_. 

Neville was a Gryffindor, dammit—an important roll of parchment tucked away somewhere in Dumbledore’s office surely said so, ink to paper for the rest of time: Longbottom, Neville, Gryffindor House (yes, really).

And yet . . . there he was. Standing there sneaking past Harry Potter in the Common Room and _sad_ that he was so invisible, so unthreatening, that he didn’t even raise the hairs on the back of Harry’s neck in dangerous alarm. Not even in suspicion. 

He left before he could punch himself in the face over his own disgusting self-pity, ignoring the Fat Lady’s pleading with him to “Remember the password, dearie, or you’ll be stuck sleeping out in the hallway again. You know I can’t help you remember . . .”

He walked. The Hogwarts halls were never truly silent. But tonight, Neville found he didn’t want to hear it.

Go up, he thought to himself. Up and up and up until he couldn’t hear the groans of the stone, or the hissing portraits, or the pleading shivers of the blades of grass. Go up above it all.

He took the first staircase he found, not even bothering to look about to make sure he wouldn’t be caught, and he climbed. He climbed and climbed. He climbed until his lungs started to ache a bit, and his thighs grappled numbly for the next stair, and he hated himself for ever thinking it wasn’t supremely stupid for wanting to go _up_ for nothing but a walk in the middle of the night. 

He climbed higher than he’d ever even flown on a broom in his life. Up and up.

When Neville reached the top of another winding staircase, cloaked with shadows and at the top of the world, he looked up from his feet with his hands on his hips to catch his breath. Moonlight streaked the darkness in hazy beams, and he thought he saw hints of bronze and silver statues peeking out from the night. He squinted his eyes and scanned, trying to pinpoint exactly which tower he’d found himself at the top of. He never could remember; he always managed to get so turned around . . .

And that was when he realized that he was staring at the back of Draco Malfoy, looking out from the parapet ledge of the Astronomy Tower.

Neville nearly swallowed his tongue.

The following surge of emotions through his body was so utterly confusing that he thought it should be bottled up and studied by Unspeakables at the Ministry. There was the half of him screaming at him in terror to _flee, flee, flee_ , and there was the other half of him rooted to the spot, prickling with adrenaline, murmuring excitedly _but, but, but . . ._

And it was all wrapped up with the sudden, blinding understanding that _he_ had just found Draco Malfoy hiding at the top of a tower in the middle of the night. Not anybody else. _Him._

And Draco Malfoy had a secret Dark Mark blazed into his arm. And he shoved Snape off him even though Snape had taken the Vow. And he met up with Death Eaters in his Manor on weekends to plot the destruction of the world—the murder of Harry Potter. And he would destroy Neville’s life in seconds, just a flick of his wand.

(He helped him brew the Living Death . . . Made sure his trousers were clean . . .)

But that Potions lesson was over a week ago, now, and Neville hadn’t even caught a glimpse of white-blond hair since it disappeared down the stairs, Harry in hot pursuit. Not even at meals. Neville imagined he even surreptitiously eyed Snape looking worried from the staff table once or twice, scanning the Slytherin pews and frowning when Malfoy wasn’t there. 

But now, he was there, right _there_ —the person Harry Potter had been fruitlessly chasing for weeks, bringing Hermione to tears—and Neville was nothing in that victorious moment but a shocked, frozen coward. 

Perhaps coward was too harsh a word though, he thought. Since Draco Malfoy was . . . well, _Draco Malfoy_ . . . and Neville had every reason on earth to be a coward around him. Perhaps he had more reason than anyone else at Hogwarts, even.

And yet . . .

No. He wasn’t stupid, no matter what everyone else on earth said.

Neville turned to disappear as quickly as possible, ignoring the sinking ‘what if’ feeling that shamefully spread through his chest as he made the decision to go. He reminded himself that being caught sneaking up on Draco Malfoy in the middle of the night for the _second_ time in one term was practically his _worst_ nightmare coming to life. Worse than the masks and the gum wrappers and the fire. Worse than the greasy black hair.

He reminded himself that Draco Malfoy was the _enemy_ of Harry Potter. That he’d tortured Harry for years. That he wanted Hermione dead. That he thought Ron was worthless scum.

(He couldn’t remember exactly what Malfoy always said about him—Neville—but, no matter. He couldn’t remember loads of things. Like passwords, or his mum’s real voice.)

He was three steps back down the winding staircase when a voice slammed into his back like ice.

“Going so soon, Longbottom?”

Neville froze. The old stone hissed at him, threatening him, dooming him. Darkness creeped over his skin, chaining him to the stairs, and he thought he saw white masks rising up out of the shadows . . .

Neville’s legs moved without him. 

He expected his body to sprint away as fast as possible. Or maybe collapse; topple over in fear and fall down the center of the winding staircase, or fall onto his face, or stand there and scream.

Instead, his feet turned calmly around, and they mounted the three steps back to the top, one after the other. 

And when he looked up to see Malfoy’s wand pointed steadily at his chest from across the tower floor, dangerous and assured, Neville had the greatest shock of his life since the Sorting Hat:

He wasn’t afraid.

The realization washed over him, making his chest lurch and his fingertips numb, and Malfoy must have seen the lack of terror on his face because he frowned, pouting his bottom lip, before slowly lowering his wand. His other hand brushed the pale fringe out of his eyes from the wind; the strands of his hair looked loose and soft.

Neville didn’t say a word as he took another step forward. Maybe everyone was right, and he _was_ incredibly stupid, and his death-by-Malfoy on the top of the Astronomy Tower would be gossiped about for centuries in the Great Hall with pity and horror.

Malfoy was standing very close to the edge where he stood on top of the parapet. He was practically standing on the air itself. Neville continued to walk towards him, his feet moving without him, eyes fixed on the moonlit outline of Malfoy’s body against the sky, when suddenly it all became blindingly clear:

The darkness, and the tower, Malfoy’s soft hair and what looked like his oldest, most worn set of robes, the white exhaustion across his face, the wild look in his eyes, the endless abyss falling off just a hair’s width from where he stood . . .

“Don’t,” Neville said, filling the word with conviction. He winced internally at his accent, but held himself firm. He wanted to vomit.

Malfoy stared at him blankly for a few interminable seconds before Neville’s eyes flicked to the edge of the tower, where Malfoy now had one foot lazily hanging over the edge, the bottom of his robes flapping dangerously in the breeze.

Malfoy followed his gaze. Neville thought he saw his cheeks pale for a moment, a flicker of fear cross over his face . . . then it was gone.

He looked back at Neville with his brows raised in offense. “Good grief, I’m not stupid,” he said sharply, but still softer than Neville had expected. “I’m not here to jump.”

He said the last word as if it had personally disgusted him. 

Neville couldn’t put into words _why_ he had just feared that he’d come upon Malfoy in the middle of a solitary midnight suicide. If anything, the worthless bastard would want a spectacle, a crowd, gasps and righteous indignation and fury. 

Not . . . not this. Just a silent fall into the black. In front of Neville Longbottom.

He also couldn’t put into words the sickening wave of relief that coursed through his body at Malfoy’s words, the relief he was pretty sure he hadn’t been able to keep off his face, but Malfoy didn’t wait for him to say anything at all.

“Enjoying another one of your perfectly innocent nighttime walks?” he drawled. He gracefully leapt down from the parapet, his body no longer illuminated by the moon, but he turned and gazed out at the darkness, twiddling his wand in his fingers by his side.

Neville suddenly realized he was only an arm’s length away from him. He had no memory of walking closer, just the nauseating image of Malfoy’s foot dangling over the edge seared into his mind. His own hand reaching out to the black robes, as if to catch . . .

He cleared his throat so his voice wouldn’t be embarrassingly rough. “How’d you know it was me?”

Malfoy’s lip curled, but he didn’t meet his eyes. “You think I’d come all the way up here, leave my back defenceless to attack, a deathly drop on one side, and not have any charms in place to alert me that someone was coming? You think I couldn’t hear your footsteps when you were at the bottom of the stairs?”

Neville didn’t rise to the bait. “But you didn’t look. How’d you know it was _me_?”

There was something burning inside him. Something forcing his mouth to keep talking even when it was painstakingly clear that he was alone, defenceless, trapped on a tower with his greatest taunter and bully. Who was _armed_.

But the boy who finally met Neville’s gaze through the shadows looked too ordinary to be the greatest evil in Hogwarts School. Too fallible and plain. His nose fluttered as he breathed.

“You expect me to give away all my secrets so you can use them with your little army?” Malfoy said. His eyes were piercing slits. “Not like you’ve ever heard of the concept of a secret in your life.”

Neville shrugged as Malfoy looked away in apparent disdain. The wind blew harsher, and Neville realized for the first time that Malfoy was actually shivering, goosebumps flushed up his neck.

For one startling moment, Neville recounted that he actually had _two_ secrets in his life, two which impacted Malfoy directly. His fingertip burned where he’d touched the Mark. He thought of standing outside Harry’s four-poster weeks ago, his hand on the curtain to tell him of Malfoy’s conversation with Snape, but never opening his mouth. 

But instead of mentioning any of that, he heard himself say, “So, it’s true, then? You can do nonverbal magic?”

Malfoy pinned him with a quick, unreadable gaze before turning to the far wall of the tower, raising his wand, and immediately flinging a burst of red sparks in a shooting stream through the air, shattering against the stone. He hadn’t even paused to blink or draw breath, and the power of the magic created a shockwave that rushed straight through Neville’s sweater to his bones.

Neville felt the hairs on his own forearms rise in something like awe and terror. He looked quickly back to Malfoy, expecting to see the usual haughty pride, the upturned nose. 

But instead, Malfoy looked . . . embarrassed. Caught out. It did a strange thing to Neville’s throat.

They stood there, an oddly thick silence wrapping around them both. Neville wanted to ask him why he hadn’t hexed him yet, why he bloody helped him in class, why and why and _why_.

But Malfoy’s lips were twisting, like he was fighting not to speak, and so Neville waited for what felt like hours, gazing out at the stars and wondering which ones Draco’s family were named after . . .

“Is it true you and all of Potter’s fanbase can cast a Patronus?” 

Neville blinked at the sudden question. “Fanbase?”

“Don’t be stupid. His minions. His mindless followers. His cronies. Your pathetic little army.”

It dawned on Neville that that may have been the first time Draco Malfoy ever asked him a question to which Malfoy didn’t already know the answer. It made his sweater feel tight over his chest, but in a good way. A way that felt like an embra—

“Harry taught us,” he heard himself admit. He waited for horror and betrayal to explode in his gut, but they never came. “Tried to teach us, anyway. Said it was better to use for communication than owls.”

Malfoy was silent for a long moment. Neville realized he’d long since slipped his wand back into his pocket, and his slightly shivering arms were casually wrapped around his chest. The moonlight made his eyes look like two little stars. Not that Neville was looking at them like that. Not at all.

“Well?” Malfoy finally shot at him. He raised his brow. “Yours?”

Neville remembered the frail blue wisps that had emanated from his wand after months of exhausting trying, just the faintest tinge in the air like an ethereal breath. He looked down at his feet in answer, horrified to find his throat a bit tight.

Malfoy just hummed in understanding. Neville couldn’t decide whether it sounded pitying or not.

Then he stood up straight, reminding himself that Harry would never be caught dead looking down sheepishly at his feet in front of a Malfoy. Especially _this_ Malfoy.

“Can you?” Neville asked.

“Can I what?”

Neville stared at him, and he felt one corner of his own mouth twitch. “Don’t be stupid.”

Malfoy’s mouth didn’t twitch back. He sniffed hard through his nose and lifted his chin. “I haven’t tried.”

Something tingled in Neville’s mind, and he found himself wishing that they weren’t conducting this conversation without hardly looking at one another. He leaned his arms on the parapet and looked out at the grounds. “You don’t usually lie to me.”

Malfoy scoffed. “What the fuck does ‘usually’ mean, Longbottom? You’d think we were having nightcaps by the Common Room fire every evening. Merlin.”

Neville just shrugged, even as something hot worked its way up his neck. “Is that why you kept trying to get us shut down? Last year?”

There was a beat of silence, one where Neville finally allowed himself to look left, and he saw that Malfoy’s hair was trailing into his eyes without him pushing it away at all. That his lips looked chapped with the cold, and his robes were snagged and worn around the collar, looking like they’d been bought decades ago. 

They were a faded black with washed out Slytherin green. Neville found he didn’t want to think too hard about who had previously worn them. Didn’t want to think about Lucius Malfoy when he was having a . . . well, he wasn’t having a nice time right now, was he? He was trapped and alone with Draco Malfoy. Vulnerable. Asking to be abused. But . . .

Malfoy shook his head, like he’d been lost in thought, and met Neville’s gaze. “What—Potter’s little study group?”

Neville chuckled through his nose. “Yeah, Harry’s little study group.”

“You think—you thought I was trying to squash you lot over Patronuses?”

When Neville didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything, Malfoy let out a harsh laugh. “Don’t be an idiot. I was trying to disband you because we are enemies. This is war. It’s what you do for your side.”

The quiet chattering of Malfoy’s teeth as he spoke made Neville inexplicably sad. He clenched his hand so he wouldn’t reach out and do something utterly moronic, more suicidal than leaping off the Astronomy Tower in the night. 

He swallowed hard. “And are we?”

Malfoy’s jaw clenched. “Are we what?”

“Enemies.”

Neville thought that maybe Malfoy didn’t hear him, the silence stretched on for so long, broken by a distant hooting owl. 

Then, “You’re awfully full of bloody questions tonight,” Malfoy said under his breath. Neville noticed Malfoy’s hand reaching for his forearm, then his fingers stopped mid-route and clenched in his robes instead.

“You can’t answer my question?” Neville breathed. “Don’t know the answer?”

This time, the pause was so long the owl hooted twice. 

“What the fuck do you think?” Malfoy finally whispered. 

Neville didn’t know. He couldn’t think at all. His mind suddenly took him back to fifth year, presumably so he wasn’t standing there staring at the circles under Malfoy’s soft eyes, and he remembered hot breath on the back of his neck, pale hair in his face, as Malfoy held him in Umbridge’s office with a wand at his throat. The tiny but unmistakable trembling Neville had felt in Malfoy’s hands as Umbridge spoke.

“Didn’t look very fun working for Umbridge. Your Inquisitorial Squad and all,” Neville said.

For some ungodly reason, Malfoy still hadn’t turned and left him there. For some ungodly reason, he hadn’t chucked Neville over the parapet.

For some ungodly reason, Malfoy loudly swallowed.

“My father . . .” he began, but he said the word in a way Neville had _never_ heard him say it before. Malfoy swallowed again, and Neville got the distinct impression that the air itself had changed, that Malfoy might not even remember that Neville could hear. “My father was proud of me for being on that squad,” he said.

Neville’s heart hammered. He waited in the thick silence for the dig at his own father, waited for the sneer and the poison and the piercing eyes. 

But they didn’t come.

He licked his dry lips and held his hands together so they wouldn’t shake. His own voice sounded different, softer, smoother than he had heard it at Hogwarts before. “Few years ago you would’ve used this opportunity to make fun of me for my dad,” he said. “My . . . my magic. My name. My voice. My w—you know. Something.”

Malfoy shivered hard. He didn’t look at Neville. “I don’t really have time for that anymore,” he said. His voice sounded tired and deep, nothing like the kid who used to cheer from a soaring broom, or puff up his chest in the Potions Dungeon, or laugh at Harry across the Great Hall.

Neville found that he liked it and hated it at the same time.

“No, I guess not,” Neville finally replied, and at Malfoy’s small huff of breath in acknowledgement, Neville found that his own shoulders were relaxing, something hot spreading through his chest.

He felt he could have stood there by the parapet for hours. He could have let his mind wander, forgotten everything about school and exams and wars. He could forget that he was Neville Longbottom and just be . . . him. Be a wizard. Be a person who could do magic, and who could cultivate life in the soil with his hands, and who had every right to be standing next to another wizard in the midnight breeze, even though that other wizard was terrifyingly beautiful.

Oh. 

Oh god . . .

“Why are you doing this?” Malfoy snapped out of nowhere, so suddenly that Neville jumped and made his shoes scrape across the stone.

Desperate, Neville turned his face to the wind so that the icy air could banish the pink from his cheeks. “I told you, I’m not spying on you,” he said, his voice only slightly unsteady.

“No, I mean . . .” Malfoy let out a frustrated huff, and Neville would have found it pathetically endearing if he wasn’t busy hating every part of himself. _Hating_ —

“I mean this. Here. You’re you and I’m . . . Why are you talking to me?”

Malfoy was looking at him with suspicion mixed with something else, something softer which Neville forbid himself to think about. His brain worked quickly for once in his life, and he responded, shoulders back. “Well, why haven’t you hexed me away? Reported me? Left? Thrown me over?”

Malfoy paused, like he was considering. Neville waited for him to say something ridiculous like, “ _Well, I was here first_ ,” or, “ _If I go and report you, they’ll only give me detention, too, you insufferable nitwit._ ”

But Malfoy only licked his lips in the cold. His pale gaze travelled once more up Neville’s body. Only, when Neville instinctively hugged his arms over his stomach, shrinking himself back, Malfoy . . . Malfoy didn’t sneer at him at all. He didn’t stare in disgust. He just frowned. 

“You? Why haven’t I hexed you?” he finally said.

Neville nodded. “This time. And . . . every time.”

Malfoy scoffed, but it wasn’t very harsh. “Be a waste of my time. You’re utterly harmless. Look at yourself.” 

But the way he said it didn’t sound like an insult. The way his eyes were on Neville’s shoulders, and the way his voice sounded like a hesitant question . . . 

Neville was just starting to drop his hands from covering his body, just about to say something, anything, when Malfoy sighed and went on.

“And anyway, why aren’t you off _scheming_ with Potter and his little helpmates? Plotting to catch me in the act of breaking another precious rule?”

Neville would have laughed if he wasn’t shivering and hot all at once, if his stomach wasn’t twisted in knots. “You think I care about rules? Now?”

“Of course you care about rules. Potter’s rules. The rules of Light and Dark.”

Neville didn’t know what to say about that. He wanted to tell Draco, standing there in his secret, old robes that probably reminded him of his home, with his hair in his eyes, and shivers on his arms, and his sharp, soft mouth, that he looked the farthest thing from Dark. 

Merlin, Harry would kill him if he ever knew . . .

Neville shrugged. “They are scheming right now, actually. In the Common Room. I passed them on the way out here.”

“What—they didn’t notice you?”

Malfoy’s eyes were back on him, and Neville swallowed as he looked away. “I’m not a . . . not a big oaf all the time,” he said. 

He felt Malfoy’s frown. “I’ve never called you that.”

Neville choked on a laugh at the absurdity. “In those exact words, no. But . . .”

When it was silent, he hazarded a glance at Malfoy, and the look on his face was unrecognizable. Neville stared as he took in the soft twist of Malfoy’s mouth, the dark sheen over his eyes, the set of his jaw.

Malfoy tilted his head to the side and finally murmured, simply, “Yeah.”

Their eyes almost met, then. An almost-alignment of grey and hazel, before Neville lost his nerve and looked away at the night sky.

(“ _He’s nothing but a slithering coward,_ ” Harry had once said to Neville after Malfoy had hexed him in the halls. And then, years earlier, “ _You’re worth twelve of him._ ”)

Neville hated himself for thinking that Malfoy was brave for continuing to look at the side of his face. For thinking that he himself was the coward simply for looking away. And Malfoy had pointed a wand at him, and Neville hadn’t even _flinched_.

“So, why are you here then, if they’re having a Chosen One party inside?” Malfoy asked, his normal voice back. “Got tired of being in the inner circle? They didn’t save you a seat?”

Neville swallowed, _hating_ the fact that the truth was about to come pouring out of his mouth, and he couldn’t do anything to stop it.

“I just . . . I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I never sleep. Not since . . .” He couldn’t go on.

But there must have been something in the way he said the words, some hidden meaning even Neville wasn’t consciously aware of, because the ridicule he expected never came. 

Instead, Malfoy’s face went carefully blank. He watched as Malfoy drew his arms tighter around himself, nearly shrinking over his thin chest in the wind, looking shockingly small.

Malfoy blinked a few times, then let out a long breath. 

“My father never sleeps either,” he said.

“I met your father,” Neville said, the words flying out of him as if from a script.

Malfoy seemed to flinch as he looked out at the darkness, his face inscrutable. “I know.”

Neville found himself suddenly hesitant to break the odd silence between them, the weird, fluttering calm, but still, he asked, “What are you up here for, then?”

Something odd passed over Malfoy’s face, and if Neville didn’t know better, he would have thought it was the beginning hints of a smile. 

But then it was gone. “Would you believe me if I told you I was just out for a walk?”

Neville’s heart pounded, and he found himself taking a step closer, until the stars glinted on Malfoy’s pale eyelashes, lighting up the line of his jaw. 

“I wouldn’t believe you.”

“Oh?”

“You never . . .” Neville paused, then pressed on. “You never do anything without a reason.”

Malfoy’s brow raised in apparent interest. “And as for yourself?”

An unexpected shame prickled up Neville’s shoulders, and he shoved his hands in his pockets. “I do loads of things without reason.”

Malfoy seemed to consider this for a very long time, then he tilted his head. It was odd, the way he did it, as if he didn’t notice he was doing it. Neville figured he only ever did it if he was truly listening in a conversation, and that the reason Neville had never noticed it before was because he’d never actually _seen_ Malfoy in a conversation in the first place.

It was . . . well, it was awkward. It made him look young. Neville realized he’d been staring at the fuzzy skin of Malfoy’s ear. 

Malfoy didn’t seem to notice. “Fine, then. I do have a reason to be here,” he said, as if he’d just announced something incredibly novel.

“What is it?” Neville asked before he could stop himself.

Malfoy fiddled with his left arm through his robes, idly stroking it with his fingers. He scoffed, but a beat too late. “We’re enemies, remember? Or have you already forgotten?”

“Just seems odd,” Neville said, silently looking away from the way the wind blew Malfoy’s hair across the tops of his cheekbones, the way it looked silver in the light. “You and me. We’re standing in the same school, aren’t we? The same classes. The same exams. Houses aside—”

“Oh, come off it, Longbottom,” Malfoy suddenly spat. “You were never that stupid.”

Neville let out a startled laugh. “That’s almost a compliment, coming from you.”

“Don’t,” Malfoy hissed, but Neville didn’t miss the fact that his face didn’t look that angry at all. That he simply looked tired. That actually, for the first time Neville could remember all term, he didn’t look . . . hunted.

Which made him think of Harry.

“Is it true you tried to Crutio Harry?” Neville asked. The boldness was sparking through him again, burning in his hands, and he suddenly felt like it was all he could do not to reach out and touch Malfoy’s arm. Not cast his own wandless magic. Not to leap up on the parapet and scream out to the world all that he knew about Draco Malfoy. Not to spread his arms and fly.

(“ _Neville, dear, you have to learn that a conversation with a friend shouldn’t leave you snivelling in tears,_ ” his Gran had once told him, back on holidays from second year. Neville wondered if this conversation now counted as a ‘conversation with a friend.’ Wondered why _this_ was the longest he’d spoken to anyone since before he could remember without him feeling vaguely sick.)

Malfoy sniffed, but his body was dangerously still. “Where did you hear that?” he said, like an accusation.

Neville tried to breathe. “Study group.”

Malfoy didn’t answer. The silence seemed to answer for him.

“I got Crutio’d,” Neville heard himself say, so softly he wondered if Malfoy heard. He stopped himself just in time from touching his chest through his sweater as Malfoy’s eyes suddenly snapped to him, round and open.

“My aunt,” Malfoy finally said in a rough voice, not really a question.

“Yeah.”

“Did it . . .” Malfoy paused, and Neville wondered if he was the first person on earth to ever hear Draco Malfoy hesitate. “Did it leave a black mark on you? On your skin?”

Neville nearly took a step back. Malfoy was looking at him with more open interest than Neville had ever seen him show in even a Potions lesson. Grey eyes slowly roved over his body, and when Neville placed his hand almost subconsciously on his chest over the spot, and Malfoy’s gaze followed his palm, Neville did something absolutely unthinkable: 

He didn’t try to make himself smaller beneath the lines of his sweater. He didn’t even move. He kept his spine straight, chest open and tall.

When Malfoy looked back up to his face, Neville simply whispered, “Yes.”

Malfoy hummed, looking back down at Neville’s chest like he was lost. “Yeah . . . Yeah, they do that.”

He was still shivering. Really shivering. Neville realized that his own body was radiating heat, burning under his skin, and he thought about just reaching out and brushing his fingers over the hole worn into Malfoy’s sleeve. Brushing warmth over his skin so that Malfoy could know how it felt to be caught in someone else’s magic, could suffer the same way Neville had since that day in the grass under the oblivious sun, soil evaporating from his trousers. 

But, because Neville was stupid, he didn’t step forward and reach out to keep Draco Malfoy warm. 

Instead, he asked, “Did it hurt?”

Malfoy suddenly looked dangerous. He stopped shivering, and Neville wondered if a gaze alone could burn through skin.

Malfoy’s voice was flat, sharp as steel. His entire body seemed to freeze. “Did what hurt?”

Neville could feel himself begin to stutter as shivers overtook his spine. He didn’t know where to look. “You know, your . . . your Ma—”

“I don’t have time for this,” Malfoy suddenly hissed, sharper and more _Malfoy_ than anything he’d said all night. 

Neville flinched at the sound of it. It sounded harsh, grating, wrong. He reached out without thinking, grasping for a soft sleeve, but Malfoy was already halfway across the tower floor like a silent ghost.

“Malfoy!” Neville called out. His chest briefly swelled (why, why, _why_ ) when Malfoy stopped and turned around, but it sank again when Malfoy lifted his wand and aimed it straight at his chest. Straight at the black spot seared into his skin beneath his sweater.

“Don’t make me add to that,” Malfoy said between gritted teeth.

A bead of sweat dripped down Neville’s neck as he raised both hands in surrender, wondering desperately if Malfoy could see that they were shaking.

(Wondering if Malfoy could see that they weren’t shaking with fear, but with something else . . . something horrible and gut-wrenching and too difficult to name . . .)

Malfoy’s face relaxed when Neville held up his hands, and he slowly lowered his wand. “Teach you to keep your stupid questions to yourself, Longbottom,” he sneered, making Neville’s name sound like the worst insult you could say. 

Then he turned and headed for the stairs, his robes trailing behind him in a fresh gust of freezing wind.

Neville didn’t think. 

Before he was even conscious of his mind’s plan, his wand was in his hand, his arm was raised, and a spell was shooting from the tip of it with a murmured incantation, aiming perfectly for the space between Malfoy’s shoulders.

It smacked into Malfoy perfectly just as he reached the top step. Neville held his breath as Malfoy suddenly halted mid-stride, clutching the stair rail as Neville’s warming charm descended over his body, clinging to his skin beneath his robes in the shadows.

Time seemed to freeze. 

Malfoy stood there, registering the charm as it warmed the air around his body, and Neville stared at his own hand as if belonged to someone else. Someone he’d never even met. Someone reckless and brave.

Neville’s wand was still in the air when Malfoy looked back at him across the tower. His hand shook all over again when he saw that Malfoy’s eyes were glistening. That they were wet.

“Don’t,” Draco whispered, gently shaking his head.

Neville took a step forward, arm still raised. “Don’t what?” he called.

But Draco was already gone, disappearing into the darkness down the stairs. His footsteps echoed until they were swallowed up by the castle walls. 

And when Neville breathed in the lonely air into his lungs, trying to stay standing as the world tilted onto its side, he realized that his warming charm had floated across the entire tower, dissapating until it surrounded his own skin against the chill. 

And he realized that the air smelled softly of old robes. And of mint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been meaning to try and keep up better with comment replies on this fic, but I know I'm still woefully behind. Thank you SO much for your kind words so far! Especially on a rarepair like this, they go such a long way, and make a huge positive impact. Thank you thank you.
> 
> Next time: Death Eaters are let into the castle, Draco Malfoy is behind it, Neville is tasked with guarding the Room of Requirement to make sure Malfoy doesn't escape, and some Instant Darkness Powder is most definitely involved . . .


	6. Protego

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right after I first found out about Dreville, I immediately thought of 2 canon scenes which could become wildly different with an added Dreville context, and which I desperately wanted to write, and which spurred the entire rest of this fic just so I could get to those two specific scenarios.
> 
> This chapter is one of those scenes, and it was a joy to write. Enjoy :)

“If that dot vanishes from this map, then you need to act. You _know_ where he is, he will be there, and we need to be waiting for him. No less than three people, armed. He will _not_ get away again without us learning what he’s been up to.” Harry swallowed. “Things will be . . . happening. Soon. Tonight, maybe. That’s all I can say.” He slapped the map again, and Neville hid a flinch. “ _This_ dot.”

The circle of people around Harry by the Common Room fire all nodded seriously as Harry looked up for confirmation. His fingertip was pressing painfully into the map right over a hovering dot that said ‘Draco Malfoy,’ which had been idly pacing next to the sketch of his four-poster for the last hour and a half without pause.

Neville suppressed a shiver at the way Harry’s brown fingertip was almost turning an angry white, smudging the parchment, as if Malfoy could somehow feel the pressure bearing down on his spine. As if Malfoy was being flattened into the green and silver carpet right now, suffocating and alone on the dungeon floor.

“We’ll be on it, Harry. The bloody ferret won’t be getting away from us,” Seamus said in a harsh, determined voice, and the rest of the group added assent. Harry looked like he wanted to rip that dot off the paper and burn it, or even eat it.

Neville wondered if Draco was cold all the way down in the dungeons, away from the rich Gryffindor brocades and the crackling fire. 

He felt viscerally sick.

But nobody seemed to notice the fact that one of the members of Dumbledore’s Army was committing mental treason from the back of the group. They were all too focused on Harry, on his blazing eyes, and his voice, and the mission, and the _cause_ , and Neville figured it was just as well that he’d spent his whole life looking pathetic and nervous for no reason, if only because now, in this moment, he knew that none of his friends would recognize anything amiss.

His friends. It had been a long time since he’d thought of them like that. Classmates, maybe. Fellow DA members, surely. But . . .

“Count on me, Harry,” Ron said, his hand on Harry’s trembling shoulder. Across the group, in a beautiful, warm whisper, Ginny echoed her brother, “Count on us.”

That settled it all, then. Harry glanced around the room, meeting everyone’s gaze, even Neville’s, before he gave a quick press to Hermione’s hand, nodded at her pleading for him to be careful, grabbed a coat, and went out. Something to do with Dumbledore was happening with him tonight. One of their secret conversations. Some place to visit.

Neville couldn’t remember.

The group waited until the round door closed shut behind Harry, frozen and silent, before they burst into frantic whispers. Tensions were higher than usual, even Neville could feel it. Rumors swirled around him like a thick, choking fog—where Harry was going, what Dumbledore was really up to, why members of the Order were patrolling the castle tonight, who they thought was coming to harm, who they thought was coming to help.

None of it mattered at all. Neville wanted to step forward into the circle, command their attention with an effortless glance, and ask them if they truly thought that anyone but Harry Potter would ever figure out the truth. If any of this mindless talking would help when they could be _doing_ something, patrolling the castle, putting together a plan, assigning roles and tasks, catching up on sleep.

And Malfoy was somehow involved in all this. Of course he was.

And he was still pacing alone by the side of his bed. And Neville had seen him only once in nearly a month outside of classes, when Neville had been aimlessly wandering the castle on a Saturday, avoiding Hogsmeade for a reason he couldn’t quite name, and he’d quite literally stumbled across Malfoy tumbling from the Room of Requirement, falling onto his knees on the stone floor and tearing his pristine suit. Cursing at the ground and nearly snapping his wand in two before pulling himself together. He’d calmed his frantic breathing, a series of breaths that Neville guessed he’d probably performed many times before. Then he’d walked away looking like Lucius Malfoy himself in the loose beams of afternoon sun piercing the halls.

He hadn’t even noticed Neville was there. 

But even if Neville had had the courage to step forward and shut everyone up now, he suddenly realized that he never would. Nobody was looking at the moving map anymore as they panicked and guessed and schemed in the light of the fire. Nobody’s eyes were on the paper at all, except Neville’s. 

And in that way, for a few stupid moments at least, it meant that Neville got to be alone with Draco Malfoy again. Even half a castle apart. Even though thick stone walls.

Even across Light and Dark.

Only Dean, out of everyone, finally gave Neville an odd look when Neville tore his eyes away from Malfoy’s dot for a few seconds.

“Don’t worry, Nev. We’ll catch him when he leaves. We’ll see it,” Dean confidently whispered. 

Neville just shook his head, then sat down by the window. His trousers bunched loosely around his legs; he’d lost weight over the past month, and he hadn’t even noticed until people kept congratulating him, telling him he looked great when they whispered to him from their desks in the middle of class. Even his Gran had sent him a letter, filled with pride from the rumors she’d heard in Diagon Alley.

(“ _They tell me you look more and more like your father every day_ ,” she’d written in an elegant hand. “ _Growing into his handsome looks. Oh, my dear, I couldn’t be more proud . . ._ ”)

Only Luna, out of everyone, had stopped him one day out by the greenhouses, pressed a chocolate frog into his hand, and said, in that off-kilter way of hers, “The plants like it better when you’re eating. It makes them want to grow, too, you know. You should set a good example.”

Neville crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes, surprised that he actually hated the way his body felt too hollow and flat, like he was fading away. From the middle of the swarm in the Common Room, Ron Weasley suddenly shushed everyone and planted his hand down on the map, smacking the table.

“Come on, now, focus. Rumors aren’t helping us at all right now. We need eyes on this map at all moments. Following Malfoy. You heard Harry.”

Hermione started assigning tasks and roles as eight pairs of eyes landed on Malfoy’s pacing dot.

Neville looked down at his wand in his lap and shivered, despite the heat of the fire.

“If Malfoy is behind any of this, if he _does_ something . . . I’ll kill him,” someone hissed.

“Fucking Slytherin bastard,” someone else spat. “I hope it’s slow and painful.”

In Neville’s mind, two grey eyes covered over with water, shaking in the shadows. A head tilted awkwardly to the side like a little kid, and Slytherin robes sported worn holes.

(“ _Don’t . . ._ ”)

\--

 

It didn’t take long.

“Look!”

Eight voices all cried the same thing at once. Neville’s eyes sprung open, eyelids bleary and thick, and he was on his feet so quickly he nearly toppled back down onto the window seat.

“We trust in Harry, now,” Ron was saying, his voice fierce in a way Neville had never heard it before when Harry was present. “Malfoy’s in the Room. We have to act.”

Neville’s pocket was burning, and it took a moment for him to realize that his DA coin was lighting up against his skin. He wrapped his palm around it in his pocket, at once confused at who was even sending out the alarm, and embarrassed that he was about to be caught out still sentimentally lugging that thing around with him day and night a whole year later. 

But then eight more coins were suddenly pulled out of pockets and robes, held out in palms and creating a circle of light for the first time since fifth year. Neville brought his out too, and stared. Something painful tugged in his chest at the sight of them all, cradled in shaking palms.

“Luna’s on her way. Her and I will be at Snape’s office in case he leaves,” Hermione said. She was already halfway out the door.

“Right, the rest of you, move,” added Ron, clumsily stuffing the map into his pocket.

Everyone piled out in the hall to join the Order members for added patrols, united by their mission to guard Hogwarts against . . . 

Well, they didn’t really know what against, exactly. 

In fact, they knew nothing. Nothing at all. Only Harry Potter’s words that Malfoy entering the Room of Requirement was a very bad and mysterious thing that needed to be stopped, and the presence of Order members patrolling the castle halls.

Neville quietly wondered whether the Order members would even give a shit that a bunch of completely clueless students were on their way to “help” them watch the creeping shadows, but he kept his mouth shut. Maybe it was the Order members showing up tonight that had finally convinced Ron and Hermione to take Harry seriously about Malfoy; Neville doubted anyone but him had been privy to the knowledge that Harry was driving the two of them mad, lost in his confusing obsession over the past term.

(Neville doubted that anyone else on earth had even been obsessed over Draco Malfoy. Except, of course, his stupid, ignorant self.)

“Ginny, Neville, with me,” Ron suddenly said.

Neville started. He’d been staring at his shoes wondering how he was about to awkwardly roam the castle halls on patrol, pretending he hadn’t already walked the same moonlit halls countless times alone that year, when Ginny was grabbing his wrist, pulling him physically through the Common Room door until they spilled into the corridor.

“To the Room,” Ron panted ahead of them, looking back with a resolve Neville had never before seen directed at himself. “Quickly!”

Neville ran. Their footsteps echoed through the stone halls like bombs. Ginny easily outpaced both he and Ron as they raced through the shadows to the corridor with the Room, none of them even hesitating to think about the correct path. 

Neville ran, falling behind them both now until he could barely see them ahead in the shadows, and he wondered why the fuck he had been chosen for this mission. He, who dropped the prophecy. He, who nearly killed Harry because of his broken nose. He, who broke his father’s wand. He, who lost his toad. Who melted cauldrons. Who cried. Who couldn’t cast a Patronus. Who stuttered. Who forgot.

Who couldn’t keep up. 

“Neville, come on!” Ginny called, so far up ahead Neville couldn’t even see her.

He grit his teeth and ran faster, hating himself for every mealtime over the last month he’d spent looking down at an empty plate, sick to his stomach and exhausted for no reason at all, claiming headaches when anyone asked. Claiming he’d forgotten to eat.

Finally rounding the last corner, he nearly ran smack into Ron, who was catching his breath with his hands on his knees. Ginny was staring at the vast stone wall, holding out her wand and with fire in her eyes, as if she could hex the stones themselves into giving up their secrets. Into handing over Malfoy, captured and bound.

Neville tried to remember walking through that very same stone wall last year with his head high, Harry’s comforting hand on his shoulder, raw determination in his step, and couldn’t.

“We have to figure out how to get him out,” Ron finally said, and Neville was grateful to have another sound in the hallway beside his own ragged breathing. Ron was staring down at the map in his hands, double-checking that Malfoy hadn’t left. “He’s still in there.”

Ginny grunted under her breath. “Can’t we just ask it to give him up? If the castle holds any morals in it at all, it’ll know that this is what Dumbledore would want. That it can’t just hide away an evil shit like Mal—”

“He has to come out on his own eventually,” Neville said, his voice almost cracking. “We don’t have to . . . well, we can just wait here for him, yeah?”

Ron and Ginny stared at him, Ginny breathing hard with her wand still raised, Ron clutching the map. 

Neville swallowed. He wondered if Malfoy could hear him through the walls. If Malfoy could sense him there, like he seemed to be able to effortlessly do. If he could tell that Neville was close, and he wasn’t alone.

(He wondered if he should have told Harry more, told him everything, told him about the Mark, about Snape, about the Vow, that Malfoy had been chosen . . .)

Ron narrowed his eyes. “Honestly, Nev, if you think we’re just gonna stand here and wait when he could be in there, doing Merlin knows what, and if Harry is right, and Dumbledore’s in danger—”

They all froze as voices echoed down the corridor, Order members sharply giving instructions of where to patrol.

Just like that, the world crashed down around Neville. 

He’d been so incomparably, wretchedly stupid.

He looked Ron and Ginny in the eyes, steeled himself, then opened his mouth. “Look, there’s . . . there’s something you need to know about Malfoy. Something I should have said before . . .”

Ginny’s face scrunched. “Neville, what are you trying to say . . . ?”

“He . . .” Neville glanced once more to the stone wall, wondering if Malfoy was still cold on the other side, if the castle was giving him warmth, _loathing_ himself.

He took a breath. “Harry only suspects this, but it’s true. Malfoy took the M—”

Something burst beside them. Neville stopped, mid-word, as the three of them whipped around to see a door cracking through the solid stone, forcing its way into the castle wall.

“It’s him . . .” Ron whispered under his breath, his voice unsteady.

Ginny breathed hard through her nose and lifted her wand, pointed straight at the door. Ron joined her, at her shoulder. Neville took his own wand into his shaking hand, his mouth completely dry, and weakly held it up, aiming at the handle.

Nobody moved. Neville wondered if any of them even breathed.

The door handle turned. It slowly creaked through the thick silence. Neville squinted eyes through the shadows so he could see the gleam of gold as it moved, creaking against its latch.

“Fuck,” Ginny whispered. The sound of it sent shivers up Neville’s spine.

He fought with himself to keep his eyes open as the door slowly pressed open, one inch at a time, revealing darkness and shadow . . . 

Until there. Right there. 

A polished boot stepped cautiously out from the doorway, followed by the long black leg of a suit, the bottom of a silk jacket, a pale, white wrist.

Draco Malfoy stepped out into the hallway, one hand gripping his wand, the other the handle. 

His eyes immediately locked with Neville’s in pure shock.

It all happened so fast. Malfoy had barely stepped forward and taken in the scene when Ginny was raising her wand, a curse already filling her lungs, and Ron took a step forward with a growl in his throat, magic already sparking the tip of his wand.

Neville’s eyes widened, fixed to Draco’s, his lips half-open in unspoken words. He barely had time to register Malfoy’s grey eyes shooting wide open in terror before they were suddenly cloaked in complete darkness, thick black smoke filling the air with a crackling boom.

Ginny screamed. Ron cursed. Neille nearly dropped his wand.

“What is this?” he could hear Ginny screaming. Ron was running forward, by the sound of it, yelling, “Lumos! Lumos! _Lumos!_ ”

Nothing worked. Neville stood rooted to the spot, smothered by impenetrable darkness and black ice against his limbs. He listened for Malfoy, for his running or his screams or his cast spells, but he couldn’t hear him.

And that’s when the laughter started.

Horrible, sickening, terrifying laughter, cackling against the stone, and Neville realized with a jolt of white-hot fear that people were rushing past him through the dark, appearing seemingly out of nowhere as they swarmed through the hall. Rough cloaks scraped against his arms, sour stench and the prickling heat of unfamiliar magic. 

Someone—some _thing_ —snarled into Neville’s ear, hot breath and decay and spit dripping onto his shoulder. Tangled curls brushed against his cheek, rushing past, a high, tinkling, nauseatingly familiar giggle.

Neville gasped as the realization slammed into his chest.

 _Death Eaters_.

Death Eaters were swarming Hogwarts from who knew where, rushing past him where he still stood rooted to the spot, clutching his wand in useless fear, the thick darkness clinging to his eyes and his skin. He could hear Ginny screaming again, a mix of terror and spells to try and dispel the smoke. Somewhere in the darkness, Ron grunted in pain, and someone cursed. He still couldn’t hear Malfoy at all.

Neville looked around frantically. There had to be a way to dissipate the darkness. There had to be a way to _stop_ them, to warn the Order, to call for help . . .

(There had to be a way to reach Malfoy, to find him, to get him out—)

There was mint in the air.

Neville latched onto it, reeling, and he stumbled forward towards the scent, grasping through the dark, until his trembling hand suddenly clasped around cool black silk. The contact shocked through his system, flinging him back in time to being thrown back against a wall, a fist at his throat. Magic on his skin.

He grasped it hard with his palm, feeling the roll of a lean forearm under his fingers.

A wand pressed into his neck, then, whacking his cheek, and a hissing curse spat into his face through the darkness, when . . .

“It’s me,” Neville said. 

The wand immediately dropped. A strange, shaking breath blew over Neville’s face, and the arm in his hand stopped trying to wrestle away for a fleeting pause.

Distantly, the sounds of battle penetrated the smoke. Shrieks and spells and yelled directives, Order members and Death Eaters alike coming to war. The crackling slash of magic hummed through the floor, nearly buckling Neville’s knees. 

Neville gripped Malfoy’s arm and pulled him closer through the blinding dark. Only seconds had passed since the darkness descended, and yet it felt like hours since he’d seen anything but black.

“It’s me,” Neville said again, and the arm in his grasp suddenly tried to wrench away once more.

“What the fuck does that mean?” came a familiar hiss, but Neville didn’t have time for their charade. Not tonight.

“Malfoy, listen to me,” he panted. “You have to run, you have to hide. Death Eaters are in the castle; they’re the ones who made it dark—”

“I fucking know Death Eaters are in the castle,” Malfoy spat at him, his voice unhinged. “Don’t you see? _I_ let them in, you stupid idiot. _I_ made it dark. They’re with _me_.”

He sounded fierce, terrifying, terri _fied_ , and Neville struggled to stay standing under the weight of Malfoy’s words, clinging to his arm for support as Malfoy half-heartedly struggled to pull away.

More screams echoed through the corridors. Neville wondered if the bodies pressing into him every few seconds were Death Eaters, or Ginny, or Ron, or You-Know-Who himself.

Neville forced his lungs to work. “What are you doing?” he whispered. He yanked Malfoy closer. “Malfoy, what did you do?”

Malfoy’s other hand gripped Neville’s wrist, trying to pry him off. “This doesn’t concern you,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “Now unhand me, you blood trait—”

In a fit of lunacy, Neville dropped his own wand to the ground, then grabbed both of Malfoy’s fists in his hands, using every ounce of his strength to hold him still. Malfoy cut off mid-word, struggling against him in the dark, and his frantic breaths brushed back Neville’s sweat-stained hair from his brow.

Neville’s voice was choked. “Just tell me what you’re going to do. Tell me now.”

Malfoy struggled for a few more moments, wild grunts ripping out of his throat, before he suddenly stilled, and for one moment, Neville’s chest pressed fully against his in the dark.

“Please,” Neville heard, whispered close to his throat in a broken voice. “Longbottom, please. You don’t understand. I need to . . . I _need_ to . . .”

“Are you going to hurt Harry?”

The contact was gone, Malfoy once again fighting to pull away, his voice back to a sneer. “I’m not going to hurt your precious Saviour,” he grunted. “Now let me _go_.”

Malfoy could have had Neville on his knees in two seconds; they both knew it. Yet still, they struggled. Still, neither one let go.

Around them, the darkness was starting to clear. The screams and curses of fighting Order members and Death Eaters were drawing nearer. Neville recognized Ginny still calling out spells to dissipate the smoke. Recognized Ron’s voice calling out for Malfoy, to surrender and get on his knees, to drop his wand, that he’d be caught and turned over.

Barely thirty seconds had passed since Neville had first smelled mint in the air. It felt like thirty hours.

Malfoy’s hands shook in his, and his skin was deathly cold. For the first time since the darkness descended, Neville thought he could just make out a hint of white hair, hovering before his eyes through the black.

Madness overtook him.

( _Don’t . . ._ )

Neville loosened his hold on Malfoy’s fists. “Don’t hurt Harry,” he begged him, hot shame creeping across his cheeks at what he was inevitably about to do. “Malfoy, promise me. Please . . .”

Malfoy started pulling away from him, until only Neville’s fingertips brushed against his knuckles, his thumb tracing the cool wood of Malfoy’s wand still clasped tightly in his hand.

“Please,” Neville breathed again, nearly lost in the sounds of battle.

“Stay away from me,” Malfoy whispered, so quietly Neville wondered if he’d dreamed the words. Malfoy’s voice was thin, like brittle glass. Neville thought he heard Malfoy’s breath catch in his throat.

And then, with one last shuddering sigh, Neville’s fingertips fell from the shaking, cold skin, and Draco Malfoy was gone, lost to the dark.

Neville stood frozen, letting him go. Footsteps of shining leather shoes faded into the mist.

For a moment, the earth stopped. Neville’s heart hammered in his ribs, painfully pumping blood as he struggled to breathe. He closed his eyes, reeling, horrified at himself.

(God, no . . . what had he done . . . what the fuck had he just done?)

Red hair appeared through the thinning fog, and a hand clasped his arm.

“Nev, is that you?” came Ron’s voice. “You there?”

Neville gulped down air. “H-here. I’m here.”

Ginny’s face surged forward, tears on her cheeks and fire in her eyes. “Are you both alright?” she panted.

Ron pulled her into his arms in a fierce hug for a moment before they pulled away, wands in hand and eyes scanning, alert.

Around them, the corridor walls were beginning to appear through the fog, moonlight streaming back in from the highest windows.

“He fucking got away,” Ron groaned, head in his hands. “ _Fuck_ , that fucking bastard—”

“We need to move. You heard who came through with him,” Ginny cut him off. She yanked hard on Ron’s sleeve and gave Neville a fierce look. “Everything else can wait. We need to _help_.”

Neville nodded, dumbly, then stooped and scrambled to pick up his wand where it had dropped on the floor. Ron and Ginny didn’t even notice. After one last check to make sure they were all okay, they sprinted towards the sounds of the fight down the corridors, red hair disappearing into the shadows ahead of Neville.

Swallowing hard, barely able to stand, Neville followed. His palms tingled where they’d gripped the clammy skin of Malfoy’s fists. He wiped them on his trousers, face twisted in disgust and shame. In utter horror.

They raced through the hallways, following the sounds of yelled hexes and booming magic, until they whirled around a final corner and came face to face with the ongoing battle. Neville froze in sudden fear as the white masks of his nightmares suddenly leered at him through the darkness, shrieks of green and red light slashing through the choking air. He thought he saw Lupin, McGonagall, Hermione, Luna. He thought he saw rotten, dripping fangs. Black cloaks. 

He thought he saw Bellatrix Lestrange, easing her way backwards towards the bottom of a staircase, slashing hexes through the air with a fierce, manic glee.

Realization slammed into Neville. He had been here before. They were at the bottom of the Astronomy Tower stairs. 

A bright, white light streaked through his vision then, as he raised his wand and prepared to enter the battle, to fight to the death, for Dumbledore’s Army . . .

But it wasn’t a white light. It was a head of pale hair, racing up the steps to the top. Alone.

“Malfoy!” he screamed out, because nothing good could possibly come from Malfoy heading up to that parapet alone. God, he was going to leap off, he was going to jump, he was going to leave it all behind and flee, fall to his death . . .

Nobody heard Neville scream. Nobody even turned.

A _stupefy_ zoomed over Neville’s shoulder, nearly scorching his skin. He wrenched his gaze away from the staircase, biting his tongue until he tasted blood, and, purely on instinct, he flung his wand up to cast a shield against a second hex heading straight for his face.

He had to get to the stairs. It was the only thing he knew to be true. The only thing that pounded in his veins. 

He fought his way through the chaos, blindly casting shields against spells shot at him from all sides, stumbling through the smoke and scorching hexes surging through the thick air. He passed by his professors, his classmates, the people who’d fought alongside his parents decades ago. 

He passed by murderers. Death Eaters. The characters of his nightmares. His parents’ torturers. 

Through it all, he kept his eyes riveted to Bellatrix, where she twirled at the bottom of the steps, flinging up the bottom of her ripped black lace dress as she manically threw Unforgivables through the air at random, bringing rubble crashing down to the ground in smoking heaps. 

Neville was nearly there, now. He could sneak through the battle, keep to the walls, take her down, then race up the stars and yank back Draco Malfoy before he did something _stupid_ like fling himself over the top of the tower in guilt over letting them in. 

(And how the _fuck_ Malfoy even let them inside in the first place was a mystery too staggering for Neville to begin to contemplate, especially not in the middle of fighting for his life.)

Beside him, a girl screamed. Hermione? Ginny? Luna?

Neville gripped his wand in a sweating palm, desperately aching at the loss of his father’s wand’s familiar grooves. He was just about to dash for it, just about to take his chance, when an unfamiliar voice roared above the battle, booming against the walls.

“It’s taking too long!” the voice roared. “The boy has failed!”

Neville looked over to see the man with the fangs rearing his head above the chaos, staring daggers at Bellatrix on the stairs as his hairy chest heaved.

“Patience, Greyback,” someone else shouted at him, but the man—the _werewolf_ , Neville realized in a burst of terror—started sprinting towards the stairs.

“I’ll do it myself, if he won’t,” the werewolf cried out. “The Dark Lord awaits!”

He furiously burst past Bellatrix, leaving the battle behind, and sprinted up the spiral stairs three at a time. Then, to Neville’s shock, other Death Eaters watched him run and started to follow, leaving behind Order members panting and ragged as they fled behind their comrade to the top of the tower.

Some stayed behind to continue the fight, but their numbers were lower now, weakened, and when Bellatrix finally turned to join them up the winding staircase, Neville saw his chance.

(Because Draco was up there, _Draco_ , and a werewolf was on his way, and Draco was going to be cornered, and he was going to jump . . .)

Neville gritted his teeth and raced towards the staircase, faster than he’d ever run in his life. Frantic breaths ripped like a saw through his chest, everything blurry in his vision except for the first two steps. 

He thought of his parents, he thought of Harry, he thought of silvergreen magic weaving over his skin, he thought of a black dot pacing across parchment, he thought of—

With a devastating crash, Neville was hurled back through the air. 

He landed on his face in the middle of the floor, screaming out in shock, and Lupin ran to his side, dropping to his knees as Neville coughed up blood. The world faded in and out, crumbling into black as he gasped through the sharp explosion of pain that surged through his limbs.

“Alright, boy, alright, you’re alright,” Lupin was murmuring beside him, his hands roving over Neville’s body, his wand tracing across his face and chest.

Neville lurched as he tried to breathe, and more blood poured from his mouth onto the stone floor.

“The staircase has been cursed!” someone screamed through the continuing chaos—Professor McGonagall?—then the same voice continued, “Nobody try to follow! Stay down here; I said _stay down here_ , Ms. Weasley!”

“Are you alright? Can you hear me?”

Lupin’s voice was fuzzy and crackling above him, and it sounded very far away. Neville grasped his stomach as he writhed on the ground and nodded.

“The . . . tower . . .” he tried to gasp out, choking on the pain that pounded like fire in his veins, slamming through his head. Be brave, he thought. Be brave. “Malfoy . . . need to . . . sav—”

But then Lupin was thrown off him with a surprised grunt, tumbling through the air as a stunning spell slammed into his body. Neville curled in on himself as the effects of the spell rained down on him like sparks.

“Remus!” someone screamed. Then someone else, “Professor!”

(Nobody was calling his own name, but no matter. They all knew he was alright. He was going to be alright. They didn’t need to waste their breath on him. He understood.)

Time seemed to fade away after that, slipping out of his hands.

The world tilted and shrank, twisting around his body like an axis. Neville had no idea how long he lay on the floor, fighting to stay conscious, clenching his entire body against the pain from the curse. Faces he recognized flitted through his vision, covered in sweat, dirt, and blood, grunting in fierce concentration.

White masks surged through the dark. Black curls. Dripping fangs.

And then, just as Neville thought to close his eyes and rest for a minute, simply rest . . . Just as Neville was starting to wonder how he even got on the floor in the first place, why he wasn’t back in his bed in Gryffindor tower, why everyone around him was screaming, what his own name was . . .

He saw it: a shock of white-blond hair. Black silk.

He was _alive_.

Neville sat up so quickly the room spun, and he wretched once leaning over his hands on the dirty stone. He blinked back the tears from his eyes and squinted through the smoking haze to see Malfoy moving quickly through the chaos, his wrist gripped tightly in someone’s hand, being yanked along . . . 

By Snape.

Neville wanted to grab the leg of the nearest Order member and scream that Snape was _taking_ him, abducting Malfoy under their very noses, and nobody was paying any _attention_. 

Then he remembered that Snape had his own black snake carved into his forearm, that he, too, had bowed before You-Know-Who’s robes, that he had taken a Vow . . .

It was too confusing, too horrifying to try and work out, and Neville reached forward and heaved himself onto his stomach to try and crawl towards them. Other Death Eaters sprinted past, nearly tripping on his body. He crawled through something wet and slimy—someone’s blood. The stench of burned skin filled his nose. His foot kicked something limp and heavy, and he nearly wretched again at the realization that it was a body.

Malfoy and Snape were coming nearer; they had to pass right by where Neville lay in order to reach the passageway leading out. The battle was dispersing now, all chaos and rogue spells as the Death Eaters tried to swiftly make their escape, their task apparently complete.

Snape’s face was white and terrifying in the darkness, framed by sweaty curtains of his long black hair, and he cast up shields and dodged hexes as he harshly yanked Malfoy along behind him. They stumbled and tripped as they tried to sprint through the battle being waged in the innocent Hogwarts hallway, while the rest of the students slept idly away on the floors below, dreaming of homework and Hogsmeade and brand new brooms.

Closer, now. Closer . . .

Neville tracked the shock of white hair like the sun in a night sky, not daring to look away for fear it would disappear on the spot. He blinked back the tears and grit from his eyes, filled his lungs with air, grunted at the wave of pain, then forced his chest off the ground.

“Malfoy!” he cried. 

But it was too loud to hear him; he barely heard his own voice. With every ounce of consciousness left in his body, Neville held himself up on one forearm, grit his teeth, and screamed.

“DRACO!”

The hazy blur of blond hair in Neville’s vision suddenly stopped. Neville watched, falling back to the floor in exhaustion, as Malfoy ripped his hand from Snape’s grasp and immediately turned around. His grey eyes frantically searched through the chaos until they landed squarely on Neville, pinning him with his gaze.

Neville looked back, blinking through the smoke. He weakly held up his hand and reached toward the sun. 

Malfoy’s face was paler than Neville had ever seen it before. His eyes were wide, gleaming, and Neville doubted he even blinked.

Subtly, the battle started to quiet around him, slowing down to nothing but blurred shapes and creeping shadows. The noise became muffled and dim, and strands of pale hair blew across Malfoy’s face in slow motion.

Malfoy’s lips were moving, only Neville couldn’t hear anything, could barely keep his eyes open. He focused on the shape of Malfoy’s moving mouth, squinted his eyes to see, suddenly desperate to understand.

“ _Neville . . ._ ” his lips formed. 

(Maybe. Possibly. It could have been one of millions of other possible words. It could have been anyone else’s name. Harry’s name. Or Pansy’s. Or Snape’s. Or You-Know-Who’s.)

(But maybe it was Neville.)

Then Malfoy’s wand was pointing straight at Neville through the smoke, a terrifying look on his pale face, his grey eyes blown wide.

The surge of _something_ that had lit up through Neville’s body just moments before immediately blackened and died at the sight.

This was it, he thought. Malfoy was a Death Eater. He was on their side. And Neville was a fool. An utter _fool_. A fool who thought Malfoy was in danger from the very thing he helped set into place. A fool who cried out his name from the bloodied stone, using his very last breath.

It would be nice to die in this moment, Neville thought. To forget everything once and for all. To never have to face Harry Potter and tell him that he _let_ Malfoy through, because Malfoy was about to murder him, and Neville would never embarrass the Light again. Never let them down. 

(It would be nice not to be an embarrassment anymore. To be allowed some peace.)

Malfoy’s lips moved again, painstakingly slow, and magic shot in a crawling arc from the tip of his wand. He looked manic, terrified, and Neville forced himself to keep his eyes open, even though he desperately wanted to turn away and flinch. 

He wanted to experience his last moments, he realized. To see something worthwhile as his last sight on earth.

Be brave, he thought. He heard it in Malfoy’s voice, and he didn’t care.

He looked into Draco’s face, into his eyes, and he imagined . . . if everything had been different . . . if everything had been changed . . .

Malfoy’s spell hit him with a rushing force of tingling warmth. Neville wasn’t brave. He screwed his eyes shut, held his breath against the pain to come, and . . .

It didn’t come at all.

Instead, a sudden shield surged up around Neville’s body, brilliantly glowing and surrounding his skin, knocking him down to the floor on his back. Neville barely had time to understand what had happened when the bright green light of a killing curse shot above his head through the air, exactly where his chest had been not half a second before. 

Malfoy’s shield absorbed the stray sparks of the deadly curse, wicking them away in sizzling waves of magic from Neville’s skin. 

His head ached where it had smacked the stone, and darkness crowded his vision in hot pulses. He gathered the strength to turn his neck one last time, to witness Malfoy being yanked back along by Snape as they sprinted towards the corridor, followed by the Death Eaters still hurling hexes at the Order. At Neville’s professors and fellow DA members and friends.

Malfoy’s magic remained over him, shielding him from the last dredges of the fight, until Malfoy reached the farthest door, which Snape had flung it open with a flick of his wand.

Malfoy looked back, then, immediately finding Neville on the floor, his mouth open and his chest heaving. His hair in his eyes.

“Draco,” Neville whispered, his throat barely forming the word. Malfoy blinked once as he stared back at him through the smoke.

Then the wash of magic hovering over Neville’s body evaporated into a cooling mist, and someone familiar was kneeling beside him, calling his name. Pressing their gentle hands to his chest, their wand to his wounds.

Neville watched blond hair disappear through the doorway, swallowed up by the shadows. Watched others chase after him, hot in pursuit, curses still flinging from wands. Black cloaks and white masks.

Watched Harry appear from the staircase, sprinting, screaming, fading away . . .

Then Neville closed his eyes against the burden of being awake, and he slept. 

He dreamt of cold hands, and silent lips in the dark, forming a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all are amazing and I love that I can indulge my newfound obsession for this ship in this happy corner <3 Your comments mean a heck of a lot. Truly.
> 
> Keep in mind it's been a hot minute since I last re-read HBP (or even watched it), so while I know the major beats are correct, who knows what else lines up here. Just pretend for me. 
> 
> Next time: Neville wakes up in the hospital wing later that night, and overhears quite a lot. Plus, ya know . . . the funeral and all . . . :(


	7. Spectrespecs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dreville lovers, unite! Let us suffer together. 
> 
>  
> 
> (Handful of lines stolen here from HBP, for obvious reasons. And a little one nicked from SS. I hope you'll forgive me.)

At first, it was only the muffled, crackling sensation of his own breath pressing against his stiff, bruised ribs. The rasp of his labored inhales, and the heavy weight of his eyelids. The piercing dryness in his mouth, coupled with a sensation of floating in thick, grey water.

Then the real pain came.

It shattered through his bones with a groaning force, sucking a silent cry through his throat and liquifying his skin.

Neville clutched what felt like soft cotton in shaking fingers as his body evaporated, and he wondered how close to death he had to be to think that the stone floor of the tower felt like fabric in his palms. He wondered why he could no longer hear the screams and curses of the battle. Wondered if he was still lying in pools of hot blood.

His ribcage was just about to burst into a million pieces when an oddly familiar voice, lost in a dream, hovered over his face.

“There, dear, you’re alright. You’re alright now. Drink this.”

His cheeks were wet, liquid pooling beside his face on the pillow under his head. Something thick and cold poured down his throat, choking him and spattering in his mouth until his sore, aching tongue managed to swallow it down.

He couldn’t open his eyes, but when he reached out, starched linen was between his fingers. A warm, thin wrist.

“Where . . . is . . . ?” he managed to gasp, groaning out the words as they ripped through his gritted teeth. He couldn’t finish.

“Shh, sleep now, dear. You’re alright. Everyone’s fine.”

Something cool was on his forehead, a palm, a rag, and the worried voice above him faded in and out like smoke, drifting through the mist, as it told him to sleep, that he was alright, that he was safe. Sleep.

“Too dark . . .” Neville moaned, already fading away, grasping wildly to stay conscious, lest he never become conscious again. 

His mum’s fingers stroked his hair. His father’s warm aftershave filled his lungs.

“Need the sun,” he whispered.

“Sleep now,” reminded the voice. 

(It didn’t sound like his mum, or even his dad.)

“Sleep, dear . . .”

(His Gran had told him, just once, after five glasses of wine with her sad eyes bleary, that his mum used to call him _wee bean_ when he was a baby. That his Gran had hated it, found it horribly uncouth and plain.)

(He wished the hovering voice would call him _wee bean_ now. Wished it would press a gum wrapper into his shaking hand.)

“Right, now. There you go. Relax.”

(Wished there was magic on his skin.)

Then he was lost. Gone.

-

The next time Neville consciously realized he was alive, and that he was lying on a bed instead of the bloodied stone floor of the tower, he wasn’t sure if it had been seconds, days, or years since he’d last closed his eyes.

He creaked his eyelids open, hissing at the stiffness of his skin, and he breathed carefully through the soothing hum of potions through his veins. Everything tilted, righted itself, then swirled in his vision until he thought he was going to be sick. He grasped the edges of the thin infirmary cot for balance. Then he gave up, closed his eyes once more, and curled up on his side in the warm-spelled sheets.

It was dark out—that much he could figure out, at least. And there were voices, a low hum growing louder and louder, floating over to him from the farthest corner of the infirmary by the moonlit window.

He was by the door, he realized. In a bed alone; there weren’t any other rustling sheets, no creaking cots.

They’ll come over once they realize he’s awake, he thought. The people over there in the corner. Surely, he knew who they were. They would want to see him, to make sure he was alright, to check that he was healing from whatever the fuck had thrown him back from the stairs.

Stairs. That’s right, there had been stairs . . .

Neville grunted as he shifted his body, lifting up his head.

“Hello?” he said, his voice barely a whisper. He thought he recognized McGonagall’s voice, and Harry’s. Maybe Ginny’s.

Then, “ . . . but there is no cure for werewolf bites.”

He recognized the voice, the floating voice from before—Madam Pomfrey. She sounded more worried than he had ever heard her; she was always steady, never even perturbed.

He wondered who was on that bed in the corner—the bed surrounded by what looked like everyone who had been at the tower, except himself. He wondered if they’d all been crowded around his bed too, before, when he’d been asleep.

And then, “But he wasn’t bitten at the full moon,” reached Neville’s ears in Ron’s low hum, but it sounded gutted, too. Broken and cracked.

“Bill . . .” someone whispered in a choked voice, and Neville suddenly understood. 

Bill Weasley. Merlin, not Bill . . .

Neville drew in a deep breath, wincing at the pull on his ribs. 

“Harry,” he tried. 

He sounded like a groan from one of the Hogwarts stones. Nobody answered him; they hadn’t even heard. 

His mind raced in the silence, trying to remember exactly how he had gotten from waiting outside the Room of Requirement, wand in hand, to here. There were stairs, he remembered that. And Ginny screaming. And darkness. And Bellatrix Lestrange . . .

And fangs. Sour breath.

Like flecks of light floating by in the darkness, the answers started to flash through Neville’s mind, sharpening into focus:

Bill Weasley had been bitten by a werewolf— _the_ werewolf—who had passed right by Neville in the darkness, who’d roared out above the battle. Bill had been attacked. Ron’s brother might not even be alive. Others might not be alive. His professors and the Order and his friends. Bodies may still be strewn in the tower corridors as Neville rested, and bloody slept.

(And all Neville could think about, all he could remember, was a young voice from many, many years ago. A voice snotty and terrified, begging, “ _We can’t go in there at night . . . there’s all sorts of things in there . . . werewolves, I heard . . ._ ")

Neville’s eyes watered with the effort of holding himself up, trying to make himself seen through the shadows. Sweat dripped down his brow. He needed them to know he was awake. Needed someone’s voice, needed someone’s hand in his to match the memory of the dream he’d been having, his mum’s clammy palm in her hospital gown.

He licked his dry lips. “Harry? I’m awake. Harry . . .”

If Harry could hear him, he’d rush over. He would. He would have heard how Neville had tried to take the stairs, surely. How Neville had been brave. Would be glad that Neville was alive after a killing curse sailed clear over his head, aimed for his chest . . .

“Dumbledore’s dead,” said Ginny’s voice, suddenly rising above the din.

“No!” cried someone who sounded like Lupin.

Neville fell back to the cot in pounding shock. 

It was all over.

It was all gone.

His blood pounded with the trembling effort of trying to process what he’d just heard. Dumbledore had been away from the school, hadn’t he? He’d been off somewhere with Harry. But then, Harry had come screaming through the tower, had he not? While Neville was on the ground . . .

“Snape killed him,” said Harry’s voice. 

Neville choked deep in his throat. He couldn’t move now even if he wanted to. Couldn’t call anyone over. He was trapped, pinned by the knowledge that Dumbledore . . . _Dumbledore_ . . .

Harry’s voice rose again, breaking through the din. Neville latched onto it like oxygen.

“—heard footsteps running up the stairs. He immobilized me, I couldn’t do anything, I was under the Invisibility Cloak—and then Malfoy came through the door and disarmed him—”

Malfoy.

Neville wanted to be dead.

The rest of the voices dropped away, muffled and thick, as the pounding in his veins overtook everything he had ever known. His skin was freezing and stiff, weighed down by the giant, crushing knowledge of what he had done.

Dumbledore was dead. Malfoy had disarmed him. And Neville Longbottom had let Malfoy go.

He’d stopped him, grabbed him, held his hands and . . . let him leave.

The floor dropped out from under him, a chasm gaping and black like an endless hell.

His eyes filled with hot tears, his mouth dry with revulsion and horror. He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to breathe normally again. That maybe he would die there, quietly, out of the way and without any mess. They could dump him to the side and concentrate on Dumbledore’s funeral. On finding Malfoy and Snape. On taking down everyone with the Mark.

“—Malfoy fixed them . . . one in the Room of Requirement—”

Harry’s voice broke through his mind again, surrounded by the horrible sounds of shock and weeping. Neville clung to Malfoy’s name like a hopeless fool. Like a piercing evil. Harry was talking about cabinets, and the Room, and Malfoy spending hours and hours, weeks and months.

Neville bit down on his fist in his mouth so he wouldn’t scream. So he wouldn’t turn and heave all over the cot until he was dried out and wilting.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Malfoy had told him. “ _Stay away from me,_ ” he’d said. 

And yet Neville had followed him like a stupid lamb to slaughter. Had followed him to the doorstep of Voldemort. Of utter evil. 

Lying there, trying to breathe, trying not to sink down into the floor in dread and terror, Neville realized something more horrifying than anything he had ever known:

For the first and only time in his life, he was glad that his parents didn’t know who he was.

He was glad, because they would never have to know that Neville Longbottom was responsible for Dumbledore’s death.

(But Harry said something about Malfoy lowering his wand first, didn’t he?)

They would never have to know that their son, their _wee bean_ , had held a Death Eater’s hand, then let him go.

(But Snape had taken a Vow; he _had_ to do it if Malfoy couldn’t; and what had Malfoy told him, nearly in tears, “ _You don’t understand . . . I need to . . ._ ”)

They would never have to see Harry Potter look down at the shameful blotch that was once his friend, that was once their son, that was once one of Dumbledore’s Army, and condemn him as a murderer. The boy who let Malfoy through.

(But Draco saved his life, there in the middle of the chaos, when he was running for his own safety with his hand in Snape’s; he’d stopped, and he’d raised his wand, and he’d _saved_ him, held him with his magic until Neville was safe . . .)

The hospital wing doors burst open with a banging crack, and Neville flinched as a group of people sprinted past him without even noticing he was there. They ran toward the others in the corner, and a woman’s wail rose above the rest of the whispers and cries.

“Bill! Oh, my Bill . . . _Bill_!”

Ron’s parents, then, Neville realized. They all crowded around Bill’s bed, holding him, hugging him, caressing his face, holding his hand.

Watching from the opposite side of the room from the shadows, curled over and nauseated, preparing to meet his fate, Neville suddenly gasped through a wave of _furious_ selfishness that ripped through his gut.

He blinked as prickling tears slipped over his cheeks, and he couldn’t stop them. He didn’t even try. They pooled on the warm cotton.

He wanted _his_ mum to come running in, wailing his name. He wanted his friends around his bedside as they comforted each other, huddled for warmth. He wanted Harry to touch his shoulder, to tell him he fought well. That he tried.

_Him_ —the stupid, wretched thing that let Malfoy through . . .

He wanted someone to hold his hand, as the pain ripped through his lungs once more, pulling him into the blackness.

(He was more afraid of whether the Order would ever find Malfoy, what they would do to him if he did, than he’d been afraid of Bellatrix’s wand pointed at his chest.)

“Does it look like Neville’s moved a bit?” he heard in the faintest voice; it sounded like Luna. “Should we go over . . . ?”

And someone else, calmly answering back, “He’ll be fine, dear. Let him sleep.”

He shivered once beneath the sheet. Malfoy would have kept him warm.

Draco would have held his hand, if Neville had asked. Hexed him first, made fun of him for not having parents who could run to his side, mocked him for being stupid enough to think him beautiful, flung his hand away from his body in disgust . . .

But then, he would have held his hand. All the same. 

Neville was sure of it, just as he drifted back to sleep, and he wished he knew why. 

 

\--

 

It felt very odd to hold a funeral in the morning. 

Neville squinted against the rays of sun that stubbornly pierced through the wispy clouds, like cream spilled over robins-egg blue, laced with gold.

It was almost too horrifyingly nice out to hold a funeral. Too pleasant. The air too calm, and the breeze fresh.

Younger students eyed him with mixtures of awe and apprehension as he slowly made his way across the grass, leaning hard on Luna’s arm, which was thankfully much stronger than it looked. The curse from the stairs still throbbed through his body, making his bones feel like thick iron bars pierced together with hot nails. 

Word had spread through the people involved with the battle that Harry and McGonagall had come to the conclusion that the stairs were cursed so that only someone with a Dark Mark could make it through. It had made knowledge of Malfoy’s Mark quite certifiable, then, and Neville told himself deep in his mind that _that_ was the reason he hadn’t pulled Harry aside yet and told him all he knew. 

Harry knew already. He was certain of it now. He knew that Malfoy had a Mark, and that Malfoy raised his wand to kill Dumbledore under threat of death. He knew that Malfoy had begun to lower his wand before he could bring himself to utter the curse. 

And if Harry and the others didn’t know about the Vow, didn’t know how terrified Malfoy had looked as he fled, didn’t know about the _protego_ , well . . .

Neville figured he deserved some secrets. Although, he supposed he already had too many to count. He seemed to have acquired more secrets in the last six months than he’d ever had in his life.

( _”He’s a bit simple, you see, in the head,_ ” his Gran had said to the ladies in her Wizarding Bridge club one evening, when Neville was thirteen and standing with his ear pressed to the door. “ _Still wet behind the ears . . . A shame, given what his dear father was— _is_ capable of. And I’m still waiting for him to grow out of that round face . . ._)

Neville ran a palm over his freshly shaved jaw, his fingers tracing over the newly sharp contours of his sunken cheeks, and he fought back a wince. It didn’t even feel like his own face. Luna continued on as if she hadn’t noticed, leading him steadily across the lawns and stopping periodically to greet hello to individual blades of grass.

Aside from frustratingly trying to recover in the infirmary, Luna often the only one taking any time to stop by his bedside on her way to count the Liverpudlian Dust-Mites (in case any became lost due to errant infirmary coughing, of course), Neville had spent the past five days alternately wanting to down the nearest bottle of potion to do away with himself, and desperately wondering where Malfoy was now. 

He wondered if Malfoy was alright. If he was cold. If his father was out of prison. If his parents had been punished for his failure in his task. If he had had to watch. If _he_ had been punished. If You-Know-Who had raised his black wand toward Malfoy’s thin, scarred chest. 

He wondered if Snape was protecting him. If Snape was taking his hand, running with him, pulling him away from everything that was scary, or painful, or dark. Keeping him safe. If Snape had seen Malfoy cast the _protego_ and punished him for saving a person who was too stupid to be allowed to live. 

He wondered if Malfoy ever did his little head tilt thing when he was surrounded by Death Eaters. If the werewolf was there. If Malfoy had to leave behind his father’s old robes back at Hogwarts when he fled. If his forearm was burning. If Draco was even aliv—

Neville blinked hard and winced as Luna helped him into his seat. His seat at Albus Dumbledore’s bright morning funeral. 

Dumbledore, who died, because Neville let Malfoy race to the top of the Astronomy Tower. Because Neville didn’t tell Harry about the “he chose me” or the Vow or the Mark. 

(And he was thinking about a pale curve of ear as he adjusted his aching muscles in his seat. Damn it all to hell, to Merlin and Morgana and back, Neville was still fixated on a plain, pathetic _ear_.)

He breathed in the full, flush scent of ripe wildflowers as the rest of the crowd slowly filed into the hundreds of seats strewn across the lawn. Before them, the lake shimmered like dark oil in the blazing heat, rippling with bubbles across the surface in tiny waves.

“Oh, the Kelp Kingdom is coming to pay their respects,” Luna gasped. “Only . . . they’re all going to die if they stick their heads above the water level, and then we’ll be stuck here holding funeral after funeral for days, and I’m not sure if people brought enough food for that. I hope the Kelp Kingdom are aware that we don’t have enough food to host all their funerals if they die . . .”

Neville looked over at Luna, the lake and the clouds reflecting in her huge, worried eyes, and he remembered how she’d given him the chocolate frog a few weeks back, how she’d looked at him when everyone was crowded around Bill’s bed, and he loved her. 

His chest painfully swelled, and he shifted so their arms were touching in the uncomfortable seats. He found he didn’t have words to tell her that she should never have had to face Death Eaters _twice_ already in her life, so the arm touching would have to do for now.

“You know me,” Neville said, his voice rough and unused, “I’m always glad when people consider the plants.” He ended with the self-deprecating smile he had perfected back when he was only six, but Luna didn’t smile back.

“You consider all living things, Neville Longbottom. Even the wrackspurts,” Luna said, very seriously.

Neville could only swallow and look away from the tomb of the man he was mostly responsible for murdering. The dead corpse Neville had mostly created.

He wished he was part of the Kelp Kingdom. Desperately. He’d only have to raise his head above water and be done with it all, simple as that.

But instead, he was stuck there, in pain and trying to breathe as he looked over at Harry Potter sitting by Ginny’s side, his neck muscles tense and strained and his green eyes dulled, staring straight ahead.

Harry had wept that night, they told him. Back in his bed in Gryffindor Tower. And Neville had heard it, too, two nights later in the infirmary in the dark. Deep, gasping, nearly silent sobs from where Harry sat on the empty bed next to where Bill was sleeping. Neville had briefly thought about getting up and walking over to the first boy who’d ever treated him like an equal at Hogwarts when he was eleven, but then thought better of it, something sharp and cold holding him back and chained to the bed, and he’d pretended to be asleep until Harry finally caught his breath, sniffed, and left without even glancing at Neville’s cot.

Ginny put her hand on Harry’s arm, now, and Harry flinched away. Neville had the sudden, shameful urge to know if Ginny had held him last night. If she’d slept in his bed. If they’d been hot and skin to skin, nothing at all between them.

He bit the inside of his cheek. He was going to be sick. 

The crowd fell to a hush as they waited for something to happen. Neville glanced around wildly, taking in the eager eyes and stiff backs. It almost seemed like everyone was waiting for Dumbledore himself to walk up to the podium and give a start of term address, or for Dumbledore to personally welcome each and every visitor to his own funeral, or for Dumbledore to wink at Harry, draw him into his arms and call him “my boy.”

Luna’s hand wrapped around Neville’s too-thin arm with a firm grip; he hadn’t realized he’d started shaking. Two rows ahead, Dean gave a quick look around at the crowd, immediately spotted Luna’s hand, and gave Neville a sad-tinged grin, raising his brow.

And then, as if it had been magically enforced, the weeping started.

Neville couldn’t be sure who had finally broken the silence, but suddenly an awful, wretched noise echoed across the lawns—a strangled, wet gasp. 

Something broke, then. Like pierced glass littering the clear sky.

A wave of emotion rolled over the crowd, sending thick, murky magic across Neville’s skin as wizard after wizard, witch after witch, suddenly realized that they were at Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore’s very real, very permanent, and very inescapable funeral. That he had taken a last breath and a last heartbeat. That he was gone.

It made the blue sky look like a mocking, ugly thing. Made the grass feel like cold sludge through his shoes.

It made Neville think of Draco Malfoy’s foot hanging over the edge of the parapet, circles under his eyes and a shabby robe fluttering in the black breeze. 

“This is all my fault,” Neville whispered at his lap. His own body looked too still, and too small. His heart started to pound erratically in his chest, like hooves striking against his ribs, and he gripped the edge of the seat to keep from careening head first into a terrifying grey fog. “Oh god . . .” he breathed. His throat was on fire. “I did this . . .”

“That is irrational,” came Luna’s voice from very, very far away. Neville latched onto it almost as quickly as he’d latched onto the sun in the darkness. Mint in the impenetrable black.

Her curls tickled his cheek. Worlds away, someone was standing before the congregation in official looking robes, trying to curtail everyone’s grief. 

Luna’s body was wondrously still as the rest of the world tilted and heaved. “It can’t possibly be your fault, you know,” she went on in a dreamlike whisper. “Consider that, on the day in question, I was not wearing the appropriate earrings despite knowing perfectly well that I should have done, and so therefore the Nargles were imminent and threatening world peace. Also, consider that my father wore the color mauve during the last full moon, right in the company of a Humdinger. And there was a Heliopath that decided to eat half of Orion’s left arm the day before Dumbledore plummeted to his death and died as his bones all smashed together. But you don’t see anyone blaming all of them for what happened, do you?”

It was hard for Neville to breathe. An odd, strangled laugh oozed out of his chest, even though he knew Luna was not trying to be funny at all, and he managed to hum in acknowledgement as his insides tore themselves to shreds like the fangs from that werewolf.

(Did Draco have to be near him now? Live with him? Smell him? Touch him? Was Draco still afraid of them, after all these yea—)

A weak wave of applause wound itself through the crowd, a pathetic little bubble of noise. Neville went to join in, then realized he couldn’t move any part of his body, so he only swallowed and tried to focus on the next important-looking wizard who had resumed the podium by the glowing tomb. 

Harry Potter still had not moved a muscle. Not even the wind moved the strands of his hair.

After what felt like days trapped under the hot sun, doomed to spend eternity in the fresh, clear breeze with the wildflowers and the clouds, Luna tilted her head up to the sky, and Neville turned to look at the soft, open part of her lips, wondering why he wasn’t more stirred at the perfect angle of her face.

(As if he didn’t know. As if he didn’t remember sharp cheekbones and a pointed chin. Lips cut by a knife into marble. A dangerous jaw with a patch of white stubble catching the light.)

Luna sighed. People were murmuring around them as they waited for the next part of the funeral to take place. Neville had no idea what had already happened. Dumbledore himself could have spoken and he would have missed it entirely.

Luna’s voice rose above it all in a soft, sweet hum. “It is a sad thing that the stars cannot attend,” she said, out of nowhere. 

Neville looked back at her face. She was sadly looking at the bright, daylit sky. “Because this isn’t being held at night?” he asked.

“That’s awfully closed-minded. You know of the ways around that.”

Neville did not, in fact, know of the ways around that, but he was glad to talk about anything at all that wasn’t Dumbledore’s dead body, so he tilted his head and faintly nodded. “Oh. Yeah.”

Luna looked incredibly devastated. “And, you cannot blame them of course, either. The stars.”

“Blame them?” he said, turning toward her.

“For not attending.”

Neville opened his mouth to respond, but she sighed and went on, “Well, they did not put up a good enough fight against the Heliopath, of course. Orion’s arm is damaged. It will remain so until the next Grool Uprising, I suspect. But, still, you can’t blame them. It would not have been safe for the stars to attend.”

Neville briefly wondered if he was dreaming, listening to Luna Lovegood bemoan the absence of the stars at Dumbledore’s mid-morning funeral.

His _funeral_.

But when Neville briefly concentrated, when he closed his eyes and tried to center himself, he couldn’t feel the stroke of his mum’s fingers through his hair. 

So, not a dream. Reality, then.

(No silvergreen magic. No silk. No terrified grey.)

“It must be very hard to be a star, don’t you think?”

Luna was looking right at him, her hair in a sunlit halo and her eyes open and full.

Neville nodded, unable to look away from her, feeling suddenly eleven years old again and being asked to summon a broom for the very first time. “Y-yeah?”

Her eyes grew even wider, even softer beneath her lashes. “To be a star, to be a constellation . . . the whole world knows your name, and they want to see you the way you are supposed to look in the sky . . . But what if you wanted to do something different that day? If you were Aries, but you wanted to join the search for the Crumple-Horned Snorkack?” She sighed and looked down at her bare feet in the grass. “You couldn’t. You’d just have to stand there and continue being a ram. You couldn’t leave. The Snorkack would get away.”

Neville suddenly realized it had been ages since he last heard Luna talk about the Snorkack. Since before the Department of Mysteries, and the knowledge of that did something sharp and guilty to his chest. He moved his hand to her thigh and held it there, and she didn’t squirm away at the touch of his sweating palm through her ruffled skirt.

“Reckon you’re right,” he whispered, hoping it didn’t sound as patronizing as it did in his head.

She looked at his hand for a long time, until Neville hated himself, shame swallowing up his body, and went to move his hand away. But her small fingers stopped him, and she picked at a cuticle on his nail.

“It would be hard to be so far away from everyone else, if you were a star,” she murmured down at their hands. Neville had to strain to hear her over the sniffs and moans coming from the rest of the crowd. “I imagine it feels lonely. And very, very cold. It must look impossibly dark all around you, if you were a constellation.”

“Yeah,” Neville whispered. Something was pulling inside him, turning thick and hot at her words.

Luna’s hand trembled, just once, as she finally placed it so it fully covered the back of Neville’s hand. He watched as if it were someone else’s hand beneath hers. As if he no longer had a physical body at all.

Her fingers entwined with his just as a fresh wave of weak, sickening applause rippled through the crowd. Neville realized that it was the first time anyone had ever held his hand. The longest anyone had touched him in . . . . he couldn’t remember. He suspected he never would.

“Draco is a very lovely name for a constellation, don’t you think?” Luna whispered.

The sky turned black, and the grass dropped out from beneath him.

Neville froze. He fought the urge to fling Luna’s hand away from him. To flee. To run. To hurl himself into Dumbledore’s tomb. To weep.

She held his hand steady, and when she finally looked up at him with her huge, round eyes, Neville saw that she knew. 

Somehow, she _knew._

He felt his eyes watering, and he let a tear slide down his cheek without brushing it away. He felt stripped naked, right down to the harsh, ugly bone, worse than every one of his nightmares rolled into one.

“It is,” he finally said, breathing the words through numb lips.

Luna looked at him with more clarity than Neville had ever seen on her face. “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” she said, very carefully. She seemed to announce each word one by one, carving them into existence far up in the sky. “A beautiful name for a star, I think.”

Neville stared. He tried to swallow. He stared some more as his skin shivered.

And Neville found that, sitting in the beautiful sun for Dumbledore’s funeral, he did not love Luna Lovegood.

No, he _adored_ her. In an almost physically painful way.

The funeral fell away. When he put his arm around her, and her fragile shoulder pressed into his chest, he closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see the curious looks directed their way. So he didn’t have to see the centaurs’ tribute, or hear Professor McGonagall’s tear-choked speech, or stare at the white tomb until it had etched itself into his retinas as a blinding burn.

Neville held her, the first time he had ever held someone in his arms in his life. And he allowed himself, for a single moment, to wish that he had pulled Draco into his chest on the Astronomy Tower. That night when they were alone, where no one could see. 

He wished he had held Draco’s hand on the infirmary cot that very first night, even if it had ended in his shame. In his death.

He wished, and he didn’t think he was simple in the head, or wet behind the ears.

When he opened his eyes again, only Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny were left in the sea of empty chairs by the lake. Luna hadn’t even fidgeted, still pressed cleanly into his warm side.

Neville turned his cheek into Luna’s sun-warmed hair, inhaling the scent of roses and sweet apple in the morning light. He whispered, for what he knew would be the first and only time, “He saved my life. That night. Draco did.”

(He missed him. Merlin, he _missed_ him, and they weren’t even friends. Weren’t even on the same side. Weren’t even . . .)

And she said, with her eyes closed, “I know that, Neville. The Nargles told me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments make my day. Actually, they make my whole week. They have me smiling when I'm driving to work at ass o'clock in the morning <3
> 
>  
> 
> Next time: It's the start of 7th year, the Golden Trio are gone, Snape is Headmaster, the students are in danger, the Ministry has fallen, the Carrows are a thing. 
> 
> And Neville chases a boy who refuses to be found.


	8. Confringo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back!
> 
> Quick note:  
> God bless Matthew Lewis and his abs and all that, but I must admit here that Neville Longbottom will always be chubby in my mind. Even if he's lost some weight from stress over 6-7th year. I only share my mental image that so that a particular incident in this chapter doesn't feel out of left field. Imagine Neville however the hell you want, in all his greatness. 
> 
> Enjoy!

The first time Neville saw Draco Malfoy after he disappeared through a dark doorway on the Astronomy Tower, Neville was sitting at the breakfast table with his Gran two days before his birthday in July, squeezing his legs tight together so he wouldn’t accidentally knock the entire tea set to the ground.

His Gran was midway through enlightening him on the various students he _should_ have made better friends with over the previous year at school, when Neville (bumbling, incompetent, clumsy Neville) knocked over his water glass with his elbow. 

He flung his hands out to catch it, spraying the water even more, and he ended up drenching that morning’s entire edition of the _Daily Prophet_. 

“Honestly, Neville, it’s no wonder people think I let you be raised by hippogriffs,” his Gran tutted over her perfect triangle of buttered toast. 

Neville swallowed down his question as to why she didn’t just cast an Impervius over the breakfast table, seeing as how she was holding her wand in one frail hand, and she clearly saw the water-tip coming having raised him for over sixteen years. 

Instead, he tried to mop up the mess with a serviette, since his Gran never permitted him his wand at the table, and he distractedly said, “Sorry, Gran. I’ll get this. You know I didn’t mean—”

Then he stopped. His shaking fingers picked up one of the _Prophet_ ’s water-soaked pages. 

Staring back at him in the middle of the flowery tea room of Longbottom Manor, was the glaring, sinister, pointed face of Draco Malfoy. 

Alive and breathing and very much _not_ disappeared or imprisoned or dead—Draco Malfoy.

Neville barely had time to take in more than the shock of squinting grey eyes or flash of white hair before his Gran plucked the paper from his frozen hand and sighed.

“Goodness me, of course the Malfoys would take advantage of this overthrow in the Ministry,” she said, as if she wasn’t even surprised enough to be angry. “I’d bet my hat they were probably behind it in the first place. Says here Lucius is in charge of the hunt to track down poor Harry Potter. Oh, Merlin, that poor dear . . . on the run and all alone . . . and the Malfoy’s miserable son, here. I believe you know him, dear? From school? He let those despicable Death Eaters into the castle. And that _werewolf_. Morgana, think of the _first years_. Wouldn’t be surprised if that child’s been Marked since birth—Oh, now Neville, dear. Don’t misunderstand me. Don’t look so worried.”

Neville hadn’t realized how frozen his face was until his Gran took his hand, shaking it once before holding it firmly between her papery palms. “Listen here,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument. “You will stay far away from that boy when you go back to Hogwarts this term. And he will stay far away from you. No matter what phooey happens in the Ministry, the Malfoys have not forgotten that Augusta Longbottom is _not_ a person to trifle with. You’ve nothing to fear.”

Neville almost laughed.

As if he was afraid. 

As if Neville wasn’t sickeningly beaming deep in his chest that Malfoy was apparently confirmed to go back to school. That he was alive and alright and not on the run and _not dead_.

He schooled his face and gave his Gran’s hand a squeeze. “Thanks, Gran. I know I’ll be alright,” he said.

She smiled at him like he was still five-years-old, back when she was thoroughly convinced he was a Squib and only looked at him with feathered pity mixed with disappointment, or disgust.

“There, there, dear,” she said. “Now hurry along, we’ll visit your parents today for your birthday. Goodness knows we won’t have time the next few days, what with the Abbotts coming over, and the Macmillans’ summer tea the day after next . . .”

-

The second time Neville saw Draco Malfoy after the night Albus Dumbledore fell from the Astronomy Tower and died, Neville was carefully making his way down the narrow corridor of the Hogwarts Express. 

He was idly searching for his old dorm-mates, or for Luna or Ginny through the crowded compartments—or anyone in Gryffindor colors, really. Nobody had found him back on the platform to say hello, or saved him a seat. But he would find them. Eventually. Before they reached Hogwarts, at least. 

And as he walked, he tried valiantly to pretend that everything wasn’t completely upended without Harry Potter there. Remembered not to throw himself off the train and sprint to the corners of the world searching for Harry, Ron, and Hermione, because they couldn’t all be back at Hogwarts without them there; You-Know-Who couldn’t be back, and the Ministry couldn’t have fallen, and Snape couldn’t be Headmaster, and Harry couldn’t be gone or else none of them would even _survive_ . . .

“Oi, watch it, Longbottom! Merlin, you take up the whole bloody space. Can’t even get through.”

The voice came from behind him, and Neville immediately pressed himself up against the side of the train as two younger students he didn’t even recognize dramatically shoved themselves past him, glaring at him as they elbowed him in the stomach to get through. One of them pinched his side.

Familiar, sickening shame started to burn in his cheeks, just like it did every year when this inevitably happened on the Hogwarts Express after a holiday break. Always that ice-cold slap of a reminder that he was just as well known throughout the school as Harry Potter, that every student knew his name. But, instead of saving the Wizarding World more times than anyone could count, Neville’s fame was because one apparently couldn’t get past him in a small hallway without being crushed.

Two more students passed as he was still pressed up against the side, the rumble of the train growling against his back as they tried to squeeze through. And he was just starting to think that maybe it would be easier if he simply rode on top of the train the rest of the way, forget trying to find Luna, forget surviving the trip, when he looked up from staring down at his feet.

And he saw him.

Grey eyes bored into him from the compartment directly across where Neville stood, blazing among the sea of silver and green and black that made up the other Slytherin students filling the seats.

Neville stared back, frozen. Malfoy didn’t look away from his eyes.

“ _You’re alive_ ,” Neville wanted to say. “ _You’re back, you’re found, you didn’t disappear, you’re alright._ ”

(“ _You didn’t go through with it. You saved me. You lowered your wand_.”)

Instead he took in Malfoy’s face, even thinner and sharper than last year, or than the photograph in the _Prophet_. He took in the familiar black suit, the carefully combed hair, the thin wrists. Took in the way Malfoy was casually his wand in a gentle hand, resting it against his thigh as if reminding everyone else that it existed. 

Fingertips painted red were drooping over Malfoy’s shoulder, playing with his pale hair, which fell down to his cheeks. Malfoy didn’t even shiver. Behind him, Pansy threw back her head and laughed, sharing a joke with Theo Nott. 

Neville wondered who would speak first. If he would stand silently in the hallway for the rest of the journey all the way to the castle. If he would spend the rest of the term being pinned by Malfoy’s gaze in the middle of the typical school chaos, unable to disappear or speak or _move_.

Malfoy licked his lips, one quick swipe of his tongue. Something cleared in his face, then, like a parting of the fog. His head started to tilt, that familiar little movement Neville had dreamed about, even if he’d never admit it, not even to himself. 

The pale, open face Neville had thought he’d seen in ghost-like glimpses around Diagon Alley corners all summer . . .

“Draco, darling, save the hexing for when we’re actually at school. Come on now, surely Longbottom’s not worth it.”

The red fingernails—Pansy—pulled Malfoy’s face toward her. He looked at Neville for one more moment before turning into her palm, shifting his back so he was fully within the circle of Slytherins once more.

Blaise was laughing, “Save the detentions for someone a bit more of a challenge, old man.”

“Ha!” Pansy trilled. “As if our dear serpent here will be receiving any detentions at all, given who’s in charge this time round.”

She looked at Draco with such affection, such devotion, such pride, that it made Neville want to slide down the wall of the train to his knees. Sink through the floor and be crushed to pieces on the tracks. 

Millicent looked at him then, all harsh jaw and accusing eyes. “Fuck off, Longbottom. You think there’s anything to see here? You’re blocking the way.”

“You’ve scared him to a statue,” Blaise said, slapping Malfoy once on the back. Then Blaise’s gaze softened, his eyes briefly darting up Neville’s frozen body, resting on the way his hands clung to the wall behind him. 

“Go on then, man. Don’t embarrass yourself,” Blaise said. He tilted his head for Neville to move.

And Neville _should_ have moved, should have fled, should have Obliviated himself right then and there. 

But his feet wouldn’t move. And he wanted . . . he wanted to see . . .

“Oi, you deaf?” Pansy called. “No Precious Potty here anymore to go eavesdrop for. So move along.” She flicked her glistening red fingers to shoo him away.

Neville waited for one more moment, staring at the stark lines of Malfoy’s back through his suit, the slope of his still shoulders. 

But Malfoy never turned around. 

By the time Neville actually did find Luna Lovegood, after two more similar hallway-incidents as before, they were only two hours away from the school, rushing past fog-filled moors. He only had the energy to give her a quick, wordless hug hello before he sank into his seat and closed his eyes, pretending to sleep. 

When word reached Neville through the gossip mill at breakfast three days later that those two students from the train had been mysteriously hexed between classes, causing their feet to swell ten times their usual size, Neville didn’t know what to think of it at all. 

He searched for Malfoy’s hair across the expanse of the Great Hall, the castle more subdued now under Snape’s command than Neville had ever seen it before—more somber and menacing. The stone itself a rough, deeper grey. 

He searched, craning his neck for a full minute, until he finally found. His heart thumped a treacherous rhythm in his chest, and his cheeks burned with heat.

But Malfoy was staring down at an empty plate and an undrunk cup of tea with his hair in his eyes, not looking anyone’s way. Certainly not Neville’s. 

Pansy flipped Neville off when she caught his eye a few seconds later, and Neville quickly put another bite of porridge in his mouth, not tasting the food as Pansy’s gleaming fingers stroked Malfoy’s hair.

-

The third through eighth times Neville saw Draco Malfoy during his seventh year at Hogwarts, Neville was in the hallways simply trying to get to class. 

He was pretending that the world wasn’t crashing down around him—that the Dark Lord wasn’t uprising, that the school wasn’t under Death Eater control, that everyone he knew wasn’t in mortal danger, unable to fight their way out.

No, he was just pretending that it was absolutely, positively, stupidly imperative that he get to his Charms class on time. As if that could somehow help Harry Potter, wherever the hell he was, defeat You-Know-Who.

And when Neville was in those hallways, often with Luna by his side, he would be walking along, simply looking at his feet, when he would catch a whiff of mint in the air. Glimpse a flash of white.

Malfoy. 

Always, Malfoy.

Gliding through the halls like he owned the bloody school, chin sharp and high and his eyes fierce slits. The students would part in terrified waves before him as he walked with his fellow seventh year Slytherins trailing behind him, not just Crabbe and Goyle now. Not slinking around, ghostlike and alone. 

He was in power, now. He had a side, and it was winning. 

Everyone knew it.

(He was still too thin; the skin under his eyes still haggard and grey.)

“ _He’s one of them_ ,” the younger students whispered when he passed, fear blazing in their eyes. 

“ _His family . . . You-Know-Who is at their Manor . . ._ ”

“ _He was the one who let them in . . . Harry said . . . he found a secret room . . ._ ”

“ _He knows the werewolf . . ._ ”

The words churned Neville’s stomach no matter how many times he heard them, hissing up the back of his neck and standing his hair on end.

Every time, Neville would stop in his tracks against his will, caught in an invisible spell that only ever seemed to affect him. He would stand there, not caring if the world was falling apart, if Harry was really gone, if You-Know-Who was rising to power, if he was going to be late to Charms.

And every time, Malfoy’s sneering face (dead, dull eyes) would be fixed straight ahead as he walked. He wouldn’t look around, or balk at the whispers, or flinch if one of the braver Gryffindors cursed him under their breath.

And then, right before Malfoy turned whatever corridor he was headed for, it would always happen.

Draco would turn his head, just once, and he would look straight at Neville without fail, as if he knew exactly where Neville was standing all along. He would look at him, and his face would go blank, the sneer gone, his eyes soft.

“ _Let me help you,_ ” Neville always wanted to say.

But he’d already helped him. He’d helped him murder Albus Dumbledore. Helped him let a werewolf into a castle full of children. 

Neville had already helped and helped and bloody helped. 

And then Malfoy would turn away, and he would be gone, and Neville would wonder every time whether he had just imagined it the look. If he had blinked and fallen quickly asleep, and had a dream that grey eyes had sought him out in the middle of a crowd. 

“His father is out of prison now,” Luna had calmly told him after one of those times. Casually, right after Neville had asked her if she needed to make a stop at the library before they found a place to work on some essays. 

“I don’t think the Dark Lord would make a very nice house guest,” she said after another.

And all Neville could think was that it had been a very long time since he saw Draco Malfoy walking through the Hogwarts Halls with his head high before this year. He wondered if it had to do with the fact that Harry was gone. He wondered if it had to do with the fact that the Headmaster would quite literally die if Malfoy ever wound up hurt.

(Wondered if the Dark Lord had chosen not to punish him for failing; if he and his parents had been miraculously spared; if there were any fresh black marks cursed into Draco’s fragile skin; if Neville would ever get to find out, would get to see . . .)

And he wondered where all Malfoy’s so-called friends had been last year. If any of them knew that Draco still had a very old set of his father’s school robes.

He wanted to know if Malfoy still spent nights up on the Astronomy Tower. If Malfoy would ever set foot there ever again after what had occurred. 

If Neville went up there and joined him, if Malfoy would finally hex him this time. 

If Draco would still walk away from him and tell him, with tears in his eyes, “ _Don’t._ ”

(If he’d let Neville reach out, hands in his robes, drawing him close.)

\--

The ninth time Neville saw Draco Malfoy after Draco saved Neville’s life without anyone noticing, Neville realized, like an ice cold bucket of water splashed into his face, that Malfoy did _not_ own the bloody school. Not at all.

Neville wasn’t fully in his right mind, he had to admit. He’d just survived (because no other word could properly describe it) another full morning of lessons with the Carrows, and the memories from earlier were battling for dominance in his mind, each one more horrifying and stomach-twisting than the last.

He tended to roam around a lot, after those lessons. Only a month into the school term, and Neville had already found many corridors and hidden passages throughout the castle which he’d never known of before, even from last year during his nighttime walks.

Those walks were over now forever, he knew. Slytherins and prefects patrolled the corridors after dark, reporting anyone and everyone they found straight to the dungeons. Neville had heard rumors of what went on in the dungeons these days, and if it was anything like what the Carrows hinted at one day doing during class . . .

He couldn’t bear to think about it. 

It made him want to _do_ something, and he couldn’t do _anything_. Harry was gone, after all. None of them could.

He’d just come upon one of those unknown passageways, nearly completely black it was so sealed off from the light of the sun and flickering lamps. His mind blank, blocking out the memory of Alecto’s sickening laughter at the end of class, forgetting how Snape looked presiding over the Great Hall where Dumbledore once stood, Neville followed the meandering twists and turns of the old stone. 

It seemed to go on for miles, winding deep into the castle’s depths, twisting and turning, branching off as Neville chose directions at random. For the first time since the gloomy start of term feast, Neville left his wand in his pocket, not hidden up his sleeve. 

He walked, his mind blissfully blank and soothed by the cool, dark air, until eventually, he realized that the floor was dancing with light, rippling across the bottom of his robes, creeping steadily up the walls. 

For no discernible reason, his pulse started to quicken. He followed the teasing hints of sunlight on the stone, getting lighter and lighter, until a fresh breeze suddenly burst against his face, and he turned one final corner and nearly tumbled into a small, hidden courtyard, taken up entirely by a single, lifeless tree.

And a bundle of robes. 

Neville stopped in his tracks and flung himself back into the shadows, pressed close against the wall. He tried to hear over the pulse pounding in his ears. 

Someone was crying. 

High, hiccupping sounds were echoing through the small courtyard, trapped and hemmed in by the walls of stone and the dead branches of the tree crisscrossing the bleary sky. It sounded like a little kid, and Neville’s heart instantly thumped harder against his ribs, his palms turning clammy with sweat, as he thought about the dungeons, about the little first years, about the way Amycus’ eyes would track the smallest students from where he sat at the staff table in the Great Hall . . .

Neville was a Gryffindor, dammit. He was chosen. The Sorting Hat had said. 

There wasn’t anything to fear about helping a little kid who was crying. Harry Potter didn’t need to be here for Neville to be able to handle that. It didn’t matter who was running the Ministry. Neville could act. He could actually _do_ —

He took a step into the light, steeling himself, trying to remember anything anyone had ever said to him that had made him feel better when he was crying.

(He couldn’t.)

But Neville had only just started to step into the courtyard, focusing on the little first year girl in Ravenclaw robes who was huddled into a ball at the base of the tree, when something moved against the trunk of the tree, something black with a shock of white, and Neville held in a gasp as he leapt back into the shadows, his back pressed to the stone. 

“It’s . . . it’s alright,” said Draco Malfoy’s voice, hesitant in a way Neville had only heard that one night on the Astronomy Tower—the first time. “Hey, there. You’re alright.”

Neville’s stomach did an odd flip, and his ribs felt like they were crowding up into his throat. His face was burning. 

Trying to stay perfectly flush against the stone, he shifted his weight on his feet until he could just peer out again and catch a sliver of view of the sunlit courtyard.

Malfoy was kneeling, his pristine Slytherin robes pooled around his feet in the dirt. He had an odd, twisted look on his face, like he was lost and trying to hide it, and he had one hand awkwardly held out in the space between himself and the Ravenclaw girl.

She wasn’t looking at him. Her head was in her hands, black curls tumbling over her fingers as she tried to hold in sobs. Snot dripped down onto her robes.

Neville watched as Malfoy licked his lips, his eyes looking around his feet for a moment as if searching for something on the ground that could somehow help. As if the right words to say would be written there for him in the dust. 

Neville knew the feeling. Quite well. 

“Come on, now,” Malfoy said, even gentler than before. He reached his arm out even closer to the girl. “We can . . . we can go and find out what’s wrong. Make everything alright. But tell us, at least . . . tell us what’s your name?”

When the girl didn’t respond, her body still curled up in a ball and her face hidden, Malfoy ran a hand through his hair. It fell between his fingers until it brushed across his thin cheeks. Neville couldn’t tell if his hands were shaking. 

(Neville had dreamt last night. Woken up with a racing heart and clammy skin. Sticky sheets. Long, silken hair like starlight falling through his fingers, trailing across his stomach. Thin fingers tracing the curves of his own body. Pale lashes.)

“I . . . look, I’ll tell you mine,” Malfoy was saying, while Neville swallowed down a surge of hot nausea at his thoughts. “Then you could tell me yours. We’ll be properly introduced.” 

Malfoy put a hesitant hand on her tiny shoulder, and his throat moved as he swallowed. Neville thought he looked very brave, which was shameful and ridiculous. But still, Neville’s mouth was open, captivated by the sight.

Malfoy took a long breath, rubbing his thumb once across her shoulder. Then he said, “My name’s Draco Malfoy.”

The girl suddenly sucked in a wet gasp and leapt to her feet, taking a tumbling step back. She whipped her hands away from her face, clearly trying to pull herself together as she wiped snot across her arm.

“My m-mum told me not to speak to y-you,” she gasped through her shock, her spine completely rigid. Her brown eyes were blown wide, and tears tracked down her cheeks. 

But Neville couldn’t take his eyes away from Malfoy’s face—the flicker of something that had passed over his features when the girl flinched away. 

Malfoy was quiet for a long moment, the girl looking straight into his eyes with pure fear, before he finally ducked his head and nodded. “She might have, yeah.” 

He looked back up at her, and she flinched again. Her wide eyes immediately went to his left arm which was still held awkwardly aloft, draped in his robes. She looked terrified, and her mouth hung open.

Malfoy noticed where she was looking, then quickly tucked his left arm in against his stomach. His spine seemed to shrink. “If you go back down the hallway behind you and turn left, you’ll come out by the hospital wing,” he said, almost in a whisper. His face was white. “Madam Pomfrey can help you there, if you feel unwell.”

The girl stared at him for a long moment, and Neville held his hand over his mouth. His own body felt numb.

In the thin light of the weak sun filtering through the branches, it was as if this little girl was suddenly towering over Malfoy, dwarfing him where he still knelt before her on the ground, staring down at his knees.

She audibly swallowed. “You . . . you w-won’t follow me?”

A breeze blew Malfoy’s hair into his eyes. “I won’t follow you. I won’t touch you.”

“No . . . no magic on me?”

“No.”

Long minutes passed, and Neville frantically wondered what he would do when she inevitably ran into him on her way out, but the girl never left. 

Instead, she stood there, still sniffling while she clenched her fists, over and over. Malfoy was completely still where he stared at the ground, his neck curved and his palms held face-up on his knees to show he was wandless. Waiting.

Neville was just considering bursting into the courtyard to end the horrible silence when the girl took a half-step forward, visibly trembling. Malfoy’s pale eyes looked up, watching her carefully, his eyes flicking once to where her wand was peeking out from her sleeve.

“Shondra Reeves,” the girl whispered.

Malfoy blinked a few times and took a sharp breath, then nodded once. “Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Reeves.”

He slowly, very slowly, held out his right hand, palm up. With his left, he jerked up his sleeve, showing her his wand wasn’t hidden there.

“Let me take you to Madam Pomfrey,” he said.

The girl froze. 

“ _Take it!_ ” Neville wanted to scream at the girl. “ _Take his hand, for Merlin’s sake. Please . . ._ ”

The girl—Shondra—wiped again at her eyes before curling her palm in her robes. She stared at Malfoy’s outstretched hand.

“You’re not going to hurt me?” she whispered.

Malfoy’s eyes shone. He shook his head once. “I promise.”

“Do you swear it on my cat’s grave?”

The corner of Malfoy’s lips quirked up, and he straightened out his spine, eye to eye with her now. “I swear it on your cat’s grave.”

Miraculously, impossibly, Shondra reached out her small, fragile fingers towards Malfoy’s hand. 

A wave of relief slammed into Neville’s chest where he stood. He felt light-headed and woozy as he watched the brown tips of the girl’s fingers stretch closer and closer to Malfoy’s palm. 

Her pinky touched his hand, and she flinched back at the contact. Malfoy didn’t move.

Then she took a deep breath, reached forward, and touched his palm again. She traced Draco’s skin, as if making sure he was real, and Draco knelt patiently, not rushing her at all. He looked like he was hardly breathing, staring down at his palm, waiting for this little girl to trust him enough to take his hand, despite _everything_ —

That’s when Neville slipped.

His foot scraped out from under him along the stone from where he’d been desperately leaning forward to see what was happening. He cursed under his breath. 

Shondra jumped in surprise, then whipped her hand away and stumbled backward. Malfoy immediately leapt to his feet, his wand already out in his hand. 

“Who’s there?” he called. He stepped to the side so he was blocking Shondra from the passageway where Neville hid. She peeked around the edge of Malfoy’s robes, clinging to the black fabric, fear in her eyes.

Neville’s heart was in his throat; his tongue felt too big for his mouth. He tried to swallow, tried to breathe, as he worked out what the hell he was going to do.

“Show yourself,” Malfoy said through gritted teeth.

Neville couldn’t walk away. He could never walk away.

He raised his empty hands and stepped out into the sunlight from the shadows, squinting against the harsh, grey glare.

Malfoy’s face went slack.

“You . . .” Malfoy breathed. His wand trembled in his limp fingers, still pointed weakly at Neville’s chest. He looked like he was going to faint. Sunlight glinted off his hair.

Neville found his voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” he said.

They stared at each other for another moment, the Hogwarts Express all over again, and Neville suddenly realized he was close enough to see the vein pulsing in Malfoy’s neck as he breathed. Close enough to see the individual strands of his hair. The width of his pupils. 

Neville swallowed. 

“ _I missed you_ ,” he wanted to say. “ _I was scared for you. I’ve watched for you. I know you hexed those boys from the train for me, and I don’t understand why_.”

He finally settled on the least humiliating thing to say, and licked his lips. 

“How are y—” he started, but then he stopped when a hand suddenly grabbed at his arm, clinging tight.

He looked down into Shondra’s face, who was looking up at him like Neville had just saved her from a horrible, painful death.

“You’re in Gryffindor,” she said, a bit breathless and her eyes wide, as if she was awestruck. 

Neville glanced up once at Malfoy and caught a stricken look pass over his face, before it was quickly hidden again by an indifferent, annoyed glare. 

He looked back to the girl. “I-I am.”

“Please, will you take me to Madam Pomfrey?” she asked. She was clinging so tightly to his arm now that he could barely feel his fingers. “I . . .” she sniffed, and Neville could see the tears brimming up again in her eyes. “I don’t feel well . . .”

Neville stared down at her in disbelief. He didn’t want to take this scared little girl to Madam Pomfrey. He wanted to fling her off him, take two steps forward, and wrap Draco Malfoy in his arms. Tell him that he was brave, that she would’ve taken his hand. That he’d done the right thing.

(Wanted to ask him why Neville dreamt of a lean chest pressed against his. Horrible, sickening, sweat-soaked dreams of firm thighs falling open under the press of Neville’s hands. A sharp jaw trailing down Neville’s stomach, following the line of soft hair. Wanted to demand Malfoy tell him why he always dreamt of mint.)

But the moment died. 

Neville forced himself to put his palm on the girl’s shoulder, and he squeezed. “Of course,” he said, glad his voice came out relatively normal. “Let’s go.”

Malfoy snorted as the girl eagerly accepted Neville’s hand.

“Bloody Gryffindors, stepping in to save the day. It must be hard to be so trustworthy—you get stuck with everyone else’s crap errands.”

But Malfoy’s voice sounded off, and he wasn’t even smirking when Neville glanced up to meet his eyes again. 

Instead, he looked terribly lonely in the middle of the courtyard, in the shade of the branches. Out of nowhere, Neville thought of the stars. 

“I wished you could have been at the funeral,” Neville said, before he could think.

Malfoy looked like he’d been slapped. His pale face flinched, and he stepped back with a rigid spine. 

And bumbling, incompetent, _stupid_ Neville couldn’t think fast enough how to take it all back, how to possibly explain about the black skies and the constellations, before Shondra was pulling his hand down the corridor with an iron grip.

“Please,” she was begging him under her breath, in a wet voice. But Neville knew that Malfoy could still hear her whisper. “He . . . he isn’t . . . he’s one of _them_. Please, let’s go.”

Neville looked back one last time, but Malfoy was staring at the trunk of the tree, his hands limply at his sides. His robes looked too big.

Shondra pulled Neville deeper into the shadows, apparently desperate to flee, and Neville watched over his shoulder as the courtyard disappeared, replaced by walls of black.

Except, not ten minutes later, Neville was back.

He quickly retraced his steps through the winding passageways as if he’d walked through them hundreds of times, every step bringing him closer and closer to the pools of golden sunlight as they flickered across the stone.

Neville and the girl—who’d been midway through a tear-choked story of not being invited to sit with her friend group at lunch—had just stepped back into one of the main hallways when Neville had mercifully spotted a group of sixth year Ravenclaws and waved them over with a desperate hand. 

Shondra had parted her grip on his robes reluctantly, looking up at him with an expression Neville had only ever seen directed at Harry Potter himself, or perhaps Hermione or Ron. But then she’d finally let herself be swept up into the blue and black robes, the older curls tutting and petting her hair, and Neville hadn’t even made the conscious decision to return before he was already halfway down the passageway, squinting through the dark as he effortlessly remembered the way.

It was madness to think that Malfoy would still be standing in the courtyard for no reason. Insanity to think that he would be pleased to see Neville return, even if he was. And Neville’s heart thudded painfully, his mouth dry, his chest telling him _turn back, turn back, turn back_ . . .

“ _What would your Gran think?_ ” said a disembodied voice in his mind, and Neville’s stomach lurched when he thought of what she would say. 

That he’s a Slytherin. That he’s a Malfoy. That he’s a _Death Eater._

That he’s a boy.

But then, not five steps from the entrance to the courtyard, Neville suddenly threw himself back into the shadows for the third time that day, as the sound of a sickening voice hissed around the corner like ice in his veins.

“—think you’re safe here now that you’ve had our little drawing painted onto your arm?”

“Think you’re untouchable? That you’ll always be spared?”

_The Carrows_ , Neville realized. Dread filled his stomach, and his feet turned to stone.

“I believe Severus has made it quite clear I am to be spared,” came Malfoy’s voice, dull-toned and sharp. The blood rushed out of Neville’s body. He hadn’t realized how ardently he’d been wishing the Carrows were talking to someone else until that horrifying moment. His legs felt weak.

“Severus?” one of the Carrows—their oily voices were nearly interchangeable—sneered. “You think _Severus_ cares what happens to the likes of you? You pathetic, ignorant _idiot_ —”

“My father—”

“Is grovelling at the Dark Lord’s feet as we speak. Begging forgiveness for your disgusting failure.”

“You remember which failure we’re speaking of, Little Malfoy? Perhaps your mother could remind you. Show you the scars on her back—”

“This has _nothing_ to do with my mother. You keep her name out of this.”

Someone sighed. “Tisk tisk, little Malfoy, dear little Malfoy. What would the Dark Lord have to say to your father, I wonder, if he knew you were harboring such . . . disrespect at your new, improved school?”

“I am not harboring disrespect,” said Malfoy, and Neville could hear a waver of fear for the first time. 

“Oh, but we think your mummy disagrees,” came a silky, disgusting croon. “Did you think we wouldn’t know how you snivelled on her pointy little shoulder the last time you were home?”

“I was not _snivelling_.”

“Little Malfoy,” sighed Alecto, “We’re getting away from the point at hand. I believe we gave explicit instructions to all Slytherins and prefects . . . what were they, dear brother?”

“I believe they were to bring any and all disruptive students to _us_ directly. So we could properly _help_ —”

“She was upset,” Malfoy interrupted. “She was crying over something childish. She was not disruptive.”

“Tut tut, little Malfoy. Perhaps your father—”

“—your disgusting, arse-kissing, prison-scared little father—”

“—would be pleased to hear of how your heart was so moved by a little girl. Your mummy would have tears of love in her eyes, I’m sure. The Dark Lord, however—”

“This has nothing to do with my parents,” Malfoy suddenly spat. Neville shivered at the barely controlled rage in his voice. “You _need_ my family. You need our house, and you need our vaults, and you need us. You need me here at this school. You will _not_ speak to me like I’m just some—”

Malfoy’s voice cut off, and the harsh ring of a slap echoed through the courtyard. Neville heard a small grunt of pain and winced.

“Careful, little Malfoy,” Amycus hissed, and it sent shivers up Neville’s spine. “I would be very, very careful, if I were you.”

“Look at him, dear brother,” said Alecto, as if she was singing a song, “he doesn’t look very careful at all. Shall we remind him which side he is on? Which side his beloved Severus is on? Which side should stir his heart?”

Someone sucked in a breath. “No. No, please . . .”

“You do the honors, beloved sister.”

“Why _thank you_ , dearest brother . . .”

“Please, I’m sorry. You know whose side I’m on. Forgive me. I-I didn’t mean—”

“Too late, little Malfoy. My wand is already raised.”

“I’m begging you—don’t— _please_ —”

“ _Crucio_.”

Something dropped to the ground with a thud. A high wail echoed down the passageway.

Neville’s mind went blank. His wand was gripped so tightly in his hand he thought it might break in two.

He had to act. He had to _act_. 

(He couldn’t take on two Death Eaters on his own and survive. He couldn’t do anything to stop Draco from being tortured in the dirt. He was practically a Squib, wasn’t he? He barely knew any magic at all. Had never conjured a Patronus. Spilled water during tea—)

Another spark of magic, whipping heat through the air, and another moan of pain.

(Draco had moaned in Neville’s horrible, terrible dream last night. Had gasped as the bare skin of his hip glistened with sweat. Neville’s rough, dirt-stained fingers as they brushed through his soft hair. A pink, wet mouth and a flat chest. A bared neck.)

Out of nowhere, a plan formed in his mind, lightning fast. Gloriously knitting itself together like the Hogwarts wards. 

Heart pounding, his vision going blurry at the edges, Neville raised his wand from the shadows and pointed towards the opposite wall of the courtyard. He aimed more carefully than he had ever aimed before in his life.

His hand didn’t shake. 

Alecto raised her wand, strengthening the curse, and Malfoy writhed on the floor as he choked on a scream.

Neville didn’t even need to think.

“ _Confringo!_ ” he shouted. Then, without missing a beat, his wand flew to Malfoy’s body and he screamed, with all the air left in his body, “ _Protego!_ ”

Everything happened at once. 

Alecto dropped her wand, breaking the curse, as the opposite wall of the courtyard suddenly blasted apart in a fiery explosion from Neville’s spell, booming a quaffle-sized hole into the stone as chunks of rubble soared through the air, littering the dirt. 

“What the—!” Alecto cursed, and Amycus screamed as a chunk of stone slammed into his face.

Neville held firm where he stood, his wand still raised, and he watched Malfoy gasp in a deep, frantic breath of relief as the _crucio_ lifted from his body. He was huddled in a tight ball on the ground, his arms clenched around his stomach, and he curled up even tighter in utter shock as the blast blew through the courtyard, swarming around him. His eyes were squeezed shut in fear. 

Rubble soared through the air, but none of it hit him. Not a single piece. 

Neville’s shield held as he kept his wand steadily pointed at Malfoy’s body. Magic flowed through his arm in a way he had never felt it before. The magic was in his blood, in his skin, in the bones of his fingers, shooting like fire.

(This was what it was like to be Harry Potter, Neville started to think, but then he realized he was wrong. He was completely, utterly wrong.)

No, he realized. This was what it was like to be Draco Malfoy on the Astronomy Tower. The moment he saved him. The moment he said his name.

The thought curled up in his chest with a hot flame. Made his lungs feel tight, and his eyes sting.

Something surged through him, something powerful and sharp, until Neville’s shield grew so powerful it became a pulsing blue orb in the air, shimmering around Malfoy’s skin as it kept him safe.

_Run_ , his mind screamed at him. The Carrows were already searching for the culprit, their wands back in their hands and their eyes like slits. He needed to flee before they killed him. Needed to sprint. Needed to disappear. 

But still, Neville waited to make sure his shield held against the last, dying forces of the blast, sweat from exertion dripping down his neck and under his robes. 

He waited just long enough to see Malfoy cautiously peek his head up from under his arms, pure shock on his face as he noticed the rubble deflect off the shield around him while the Carrows still struggled to keep their own shields in place. 

Wildly, Malfoy’s gaze went straight to the passageway. He squinted through the darkness.

Their eyes met. 

Malfoy’s mouth dropped open, and he reached up a shaking hand to push the hair out of his eyes.

“Run,” Neville told him, glancing quickly at the only other exit from the courtyard, just as Amycus ducked a final piece of flying rubble, and Alecto raised her wand to hurl a hex where the blast had come from.

“Run, Draco,” he said again, and Malfoy nodded, his eyes blown wide.

Then Neville ducked the screaming red hex from Alecto’s wand, turned back to the darkness of the passageway, and he ran.

His feet pounded thudding echoes in the dark, booming over the enraged calls of the Carrows following behind him. He heard their footsteps sprinting down the passageway in chase, and his heart gave a surge of triumph even through the haze of fear.

They were running away from Malfoy, leaving him behind. Malfoy could escape.

Neville ran so fast his feet felt like they were numb, detached from his legs. He whipped around the now-familiar dark corners of the passageway, biting his tongue when stray hexes narrowly missed their aim, blasting the stone around him instead of his back. 

He could hear them getting closer, their feet pounding against the stone, their hisses echoing like thousands of snakes bearing down on his heels.

He narrowly avoided colliding face-first with a group of Hufflepuffs when he burst out into the main hallway. They screamed and leapt back, and he barrelled into someone’s book bag as he hung a sharp right without even considering where he was going, just knowing that he had to run. He had to run, run, _run_.

“Move!” he screamed. He waved his hand wildly, flashing his wand. “Move, move!”

Shocked students parted in waves before him, tripping over themselves in terror, as Neville sprinted through the halls, barreling around corners. He couldn’t tell whether everyone was more shocked at the fact that a student was running away from two Death Eaters, dodging their hurled curses, or the fact that student was Neville Longbottom.

Something nasty and bright orange missed his cheek by just inches. Sweat poured down his back, and his lungs felt like blocks of ice.

“Come back, little one!” Alecto called out behind him. “Stay and play!”

“Not so little, are you?” Amycus laughed, even as he panted for breaths. It sounded like he was having an immense amount of fun. “Come on, then. Let us get a look at your face!”

Tears brimmed in Neville’s eyes, and his throat burned. Students continued to cry out in shock as he slammed into them, sprinting past. He accidentally knocked one student to the ground, and leapt over another. A stinging hex missed his leg by a hair, and he barely jumped over the trail of sparks in time.

He had never, in his entire life, run so far or so fast.

Still, he ran.

Flying through Hogwarts like he’d never seen it before, he whipped around another corner, a painful stitch searing into his side and his stomach on fire, and he suddenly realized that he had been in this hallway many times before.

Out of nowhere, Harry Potter’s solid voice rang through his head: “ _All you need to do is be sincere, to ask for what you need, and the Room will give it to you. You just need to be earnest, to truly need it . . ._ ”

“I need to be safe!” Neville cried out, sprinting and nearly tripping onto his face down the hallway of tapestries.

Pounding footsteps echoed behind him, just about to turn the final corner to where he stood. Someone screamed. A hex exploded the stone in the distance. One of the Carrows roared while the other cackled. Neville imagined he could feel their hot breath on the back of his neck.

“Please!” Neville yelled, his heart bursting out of his chest. He slapped his hands to the stone wall as he ran; tried to rip at the tapestries. “Please, I need to be safe!”

Out of the corner of his eye, a body finally whipped around the corner. A wand raised, and a blast of terrifying magic burst from the tip of it, flying down the corridor towards where Neville stood.

(He thought of Draco. Draco’s arms around him, telling him to be brave, that it wouldn’t hurt to die, that he was right there, wasn’t leaving. Draco’s lips on his cheek, holding him close, saying his name—)

A door appeared before him, right in the middle of the stone. Neville blinked.

Then it flew open, blasting Neville with air, and Neville could just feel the scorching heat of the Carrows’ curse starting to brush against his skin when something reached out, twined around his limbs, and physically pulled him through the doorway, throwing him down with a great slam onto his face on cool stone.

The door whammed shut behind him. 

Instantly, there was silence.

Neville lay on his face for what felt like hours. He tried and failed to breathe, sucking the air into his heaving lungs and coughing it out, over and over. 

Shivers and a cold sweat descended on his spine, terror and exertion making his limbs feel prickling hot and made of lead. He blinked water out of his eyes as the freezing stone pressed into his cheek, reminding him that he was alive. That he could _feel_.

Long minutes later, when Neville could open his eyes without seeing grey, he gritted his teeth and craned up his neck to look around.

Neville gasped. 

The Dumbledore’s Army Headquarters stared back at him, perfectly pristine and preserved, as if no time had passed. 

He saw the exact couch where he’d been sitting when Harry had told him that he was proud of him for the first time. He saw the place he’d been standing when Luna cast her Patronus and turned to him with shocked tears in her eyes, in awe of the silver hare. He saw where he’d walked in on Harry kissing Cho. Where he’d learned of Bellatrix’s escape from Azkaban from the front page of the _Prophet_. Where he’d first felt a spark of _something_ along his spine when Dean’s shirt had ridden up, and Neville had glimpsed the small of his back. The way his hipbone tucked into his trousers.

Dumbly, Neville pushed himself to his feet and took shaky steps to the nearest seat, sinking down onto it with fear still rolling through his limbs. He looked around him in quiet shock. The Room felt huge and empty as it swarmed around him, and even when he strained his ears, all he could hear was his own breathing. No whispers trapped in the stone from their meetings from fifth year. No hums of magic still coursing through the old walls. No wizard wireless playing in the corner while people fought over the controls. No laughter. 

And in the middle of it all, staring at a scene from what felt like a completely separate life—a life filled with purpose and hope, with magic and Light—Neville thought of Draco Malfoy’s face, right at the moment Neville told him to run. When Malfoy saw who he was.

The terror in his eyes as he lay at the feet of the Carrows. The pain from the curse still blazing across his pale skin.

The way his grey eyes had looked wet when the little girl’s pinky touched his palm . . .

With a shaking hand, Neville pulled his DA coin out from his pocket, struck with gratitude that it hadn’t fallen out as he ran. Something warm surged up his back as he held it in his palm. 

It felt like the unprecedented magic of his _protego_. Like power, and like safety. 

It felt like Harry Potter.

“For Dumbledore’s Army,” Neville whispered to himself, but as he said it, the words reverberated in his chest in an entirely different way, curling around his ribs and holding on, not letting go:

_”For Draco,”_ the words really said. 

Neville would swear to it under oath. 

(He yearned for Malfoy to be seated on the chair across from him in the Room, bathed by the fire with embroidered pillows against his back. For Malfoy to get to cast his Patronus and watch it soar across the ceiling. For him to get to hear Harry tell him he was proud of him, for him to fight for the controls of the wireless, to sit and laugh around cards. To press his thigh against Neville’s when they got tired, drooping together on the sofa.)

But Malfoy would never get to do any of that. 

He was . . . he was Malfoy. And he was Marked. And he had let in the werewolf. 

(But none of that mattered anymore, Neville thought. They were tired words. Meaningless sounds.)

And so, Neville allowed himself, just this once, to keep thinking of Draco Malfoy when he finally, cautiously slipped out of the door an hour later, gripping his coin tightly in his palm as he crept through the empty hallways back to his dorm. 

He kept his wand in his hand, ready to fight for his life at any moment. Peered around corners expecting to see a curse hurtling towards his face. Tip-toed in case he heard a sickening laugh echo down the staircases. 

But he made it back to Gryffindor Tower without catching sight once of the Carrows, or even of Snape.

(Without seeing a shock of white hair, or a thin wrist.)

Ginny looked up from a textbook when Neville crawled through the Common Room door.

“Alright, Nev?” she asked, then her face frowned in sudden concern. “Merlin, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve just battled a—”

But Neville cut her off with a gentle hand, and he steeled himself, settling his shoulders.

“Listen to me,” he said, and pairs of eyes around the room all swivelled to him in quiet surprise. He gripped his coin tight enough that the edges cut into his palm.

“I know what we can do this year,” he went on. “Without Harry. I have a plan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so gone on this ship it is physically painful.
> 
> THANK YOU for the kindness shown in the comments. They are so special and warm my soul <3
> 
> Next time: Neville watches Snape lead Malfoy to the edges of the forest where apparates away. Neville, of course, waits in the shadows for him to come back . . .


	9. Lumos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back!

The cushioning charm had worn off well over an hour ago. The rough face of the stone was starting to cut into Neville’s back where he perched on the window ledge of his dorm, his knees to his chest.

Still, he didn’t move. He stared at his ghostly reflection in the window as it seemed to waver and melt in the heavy storm, shivering at the steady patter of rain against the glass.

He used to be terrified of storms when he was a kid. A wicked part of him laughed at the unbridled praise that would probably fall from his Gran’s lips if she could only see him now.

The door flung open then, and Seamus ducked his head in, then laughed in surprise that Neville was still there.

“Come on, Nev,” he said. “We’re fancying some firewhisky Dean smuggled in from Hogsmeade. Celebration for our first successful meeting. Come join.”

But Neville clutched his DA coin tighter in his palm and gave Seamus an apologetic smile. “Bit tired,” he said.

“Aw, come off it, mate. You’re the guest of honor! Bringing us back together and all.”

Neville hated the hot blush that spread across his cheeks, hoping it was hidden by the darkness of the room. “Just tired,” he said again.

He waited for Seamus’ next line of attack to try to convince him, but instead, Seamus gave up surprisingly quickly at that, nodding once and shutting the dormitory door on his way out.

“He still sitting up there?” Neville heard someone ask from down in the Common Room.

“Aye. Probably worried how his plants are doing in this rain,” Seamus’ voice said. “Wouldn’t be surprised if we catch him sneaking out to go check on them before the night’s through.”

Neville heard the warm chorus of soft laughter that wafted up the stairs. A different laughter from the kind usually directed at him—warmer, more comfortably amused—but laughter, all the same.

He wasn’t sitting there checking up on how “his plants” were faring in the rain. In fact, he wasn’t checking up on anything at all. He wasn’t thinking, or planning, or reminiscing.

He was just . . . sitting, in a way he hadn’t gotten to do since he’d been spending every second of his free time planning the return of the DA with Ginny and Luna.

Sitting, and definitely _not_ holding the sleeve of his jumper close to his nose whenever he inhaled—the sleeve which had brushed against a stalk of mint earlier that day in the greenhouses by accident.

Merlin, he was an idiot. A big, stupid idiot.

He wrapped the end of the sleeve around his fingers and pressed it to his nose once more, then deeply inhaled.

Pain suddenly lanced through his right calf, and he shifted on the uncomfortable stone seat to try and relieve the cramp. He’d pulled the muscle there badly during his sprint from the Carrows nearly two weeks back, but, for some reason, he’d never actually gone to the hospital wing about it. He’d hidden his limp successfully from everyone; nobody had ever asked him about it, at least.

There was something he needed about the pain, he found. Something to remind him that what happened that day had been real. That the little girl really had reached out for Malfoy’s hand. That Malfoy had locked eyes with him where he lay on the floor beneath Neville’s shield, terrified and desperate, and yet . . . like he somehow _knew_ that Neville would be there, wand raised.

(Needed the pain in the middle of the night to rip him from the pull of choking, wrecked dreams. Dreams of half-lidded grey eyes and full, wet lips. A warm, lean body being pressed into a mattress beneath his own. White hair fanned over a pillow of silver and green. Dirt-stained fingertips on a length of pale throat.)

A chorus of sudden laughter erupted from downstairs, ripping Neville from his thoughts. 

Briefly, his coin still pressed into his palm, Neville considered getting up and going down to join them. After all, he _had_ somehow successfully lead them through their first DA meeting earlier that evening, even if Ginny had ended up doing most of the talking, and even if Neville had nearly passed out afterwards from nerves. Even if he’d walked away with sweat dripping down his chest and back under his shirt. Dean _had_ suggested whipping out the firewhisky just to celebrate it all . . . Neville’s grand idea . . .

“To Harry!” someone yelled from downstairs, and the resulting cheer sent painful shivers through Neville’s cramped bones.

“To Potter!” they all responded. And someone else, their voice already heavy and slurred, cried, “Potter lives!”

Neville glanced over at Harry’s empty bed, the sheets perfectly folded. A tight, hot ball formed in his throat, and he looked quickly away.

No, Neville couldn’t go downstairs. He just couldn’t.

Instead he rubbed his thumb over his wand—his wand which had _somehow_ managed to cast a protego strong enough to withstand an explosion—and he thought about the bruise he’d seen on Malfoy’s face two days ago in the hall. 

It had been in the shape of a palmprint on his cheek and jaw. Neville had stared, frozen in place, as Pansy rolled her eyes at Malfoy and effortlessly healed it where they stood to the side of the corridor. Her red nails had trailed over Malfoy’s healed skin in fondness and exasperation.

“You have _got_ to stop picking a fight with every kiddie Gryffindor you run across in the halls,” she’d said, shaking her head. “It’s making your pretty face very difficult to look at, you know.”

And Malfoy had met Neville’s eyes, then, just for a split-second. As he always did. 

Then he’d brushed Pansy’s hand off him with a quiet scoff and walked away by her side, heading to class.

Neville’s eyes flew open with a start. He hadn’t noticed himself falling asleep, and he didn’t know whether minutes or hours had passed since he’d been listening to cheers about Harry and thinking about Pansy’s red nails.

Now, though, he was instantly awake, his heart drumming hard in his chest for no reason.

_The Carrows_ , he thought. It was the only explanation for why he’d been ripped from sleep on such high alert.

The Carrows had found him, had finally recognized him, were coming to finish the job they started. Were lurking behind his shoulder right at this moment, wands raised.

(And if Neville was dead and gone then nobody would know about the the tower. Nobody would know that Malfoy ripped his hand out of Snape’s to cast the spell. No one would _know_ —)

Gritting his teeth, Neville took a breath over his racing heart, braced himself, then whipped around as quick as he could, his wand already raised and one foot planted firmly on the ground, toes gripping the stone. 

For a moment, his body jolted violently, muscles trembling with the urge to cast at the danger that must be behind him.

But nobody was there.

The breath rushed out of his lungs in a stale moan of relief. He quickly looked down and took stock of himself; his coin was still clutched in his fist, all his clothes still on, his body intact.

A loud boom suddenly shook the walls of the dormitory, rattling what sounded like glass from downstairs, followed by a whoop of shouts and laughter.

Exploding Snap, he realized. Just a game of Exploding Snap which had jolted him awake.

Embarrassed shame rushed through his cheeks as he stared down at his feet. The leftover adrenaline churned hotly under his skin as he tried to take deep breaths, hating the fact he’d been naive enough to think that the Carrows gave enough of a shit about him for _one second_ to track him down in his dorm _two weeks later_.

Neville knew full well they got a good enough look at his face during the chase. Got a good enough look at his body. Could have asked one of the hundred students they passed which Gryffindor had just sprinted past them in the hall.

They could have had him strung up by his feet in the dungeons in seconds.

Somehow, the knowledge that they _hadn’t_ made shame spread through Neville’s chest. Apparently, even when he literally blew up a wall at Hogwarts, he was still considered harmless, not capable, not even a threat.

Even Malfoy had said so.

Neville sank back down onto the ledge with a sigh. Every muscle in his back and neck screamed at him from being curled up there for so long. Neville was just wondering whether he should finally move over to his bed for a change of scenery when he noticed something move through the darkness beyond the window.

Instantly, he was sitting up straight and alert, awareness thrumming through his body as the back of his neck prickled.

For no reason at all, Neville pressed his face to the glass and squinted out, willing the movement to happen again so he could see what it was.

(As if it was anything at all, or anything that somehow concerned him, or anything actually important.)

_There_.

There it was again.

Far below the tower on the black lawns of the grounds, something was fluttering in the darkness, barely visible through the pelting streams of rain and the heavy clouds.

It was black and billowing, moving quickly across the grass. It glided, almost like it was flying . . .

A _Dementor_.

Neville’s heart leapt up in his throat as he flinched back from the glass. Terror burned his skin.

He gripped his wand in a sweating palm as frantic plans of what he could do shot through his mind at top speed. The same adrenaline from that day in the courtyard was pulsing in his ears, nearly blinding his vision, and he was already halfway up from the ledge, tripping over his feet to move fast enough, when he noticed something else through the smudged windowpane:

A star. A flash of white.

A Patronus?

But . . . no . . .

Something hot curled up in Neville’s stomach. He stood there dumbly, one knee still perched on the seat, and he held his breath so it wouldn’t fog up the glass as he tried to make out what was going on through the rain.

His own pulse was louder than the drops striking the glass. 

Finally, he saw that the speck of white was following the black, billowing thing, both moving so quickly they must have been sprinting across the grass. Neville could just barely make out black robes beneath the burst of white, blowing back in the storming wind around two pairs of legs. 

A shock of lightning cracked through the sky, then. Ripping apart the fog.

For a piercing second, everything was made clear, and Neville sucked in a gasp.

It was Malfoy, glancing over his shoulder to stare back at the retreating castle, sprinting through the wet grass unbelievably fast. 

His face was twisted in pain, his skin startlingly white, and his right hand was clasped hard over his left forearm, squeezing it tight against his chest as he ran after the black ghost gliding before him.

It was Snape.

Neville’s other knee collided with the stone of the seat as he fell forward. He huddled onto the ledge, pressing his hands to the glass like a little kid as he willed the lightning to flash again so he could try to see _anything_ of what was going on.

Then, like the answer to his wishes, the warm glow of a _lumos_ became a glowing orb down on the grass, bobbing along from the tip of Snape’s wand as they ran.

Malfoy’s white hair kept following the light until they were at the very edge of the Forbidden Forest. He slowed down and stepped into the yellow glow from Snape’s wand, and Neville could see that he was trembling, completely soaked through with rain. His hair clung to his face and neck, and his mouth was squeezed shut as if he was biting his lip.

Neville watched, peering through his own reflection in the glass, as Snape stepped closer to Malfoy, until his wand between them only illuminated their faces. Another bolt of lightning flashed, and Neville saw that Malfoy’s left arm was still clutched tightly to his chest.

Snape reached out, then, and Neville foolishly gripped his own wand and raised it, as if he could somehow do anything to halt whatever was about to happen between them. Visions from the midnight corridor last year swam through Neville’s mind: harsh words and threatened hexes, bodies throwing each other back into the walls, hissing with rage.

But instead, Snape’s ghostly white fingers merely pried Malfoy’s arm away from his chest. Snape pushed up Malfoy’s sleeve and held his palm over the bare Mark between them—the black stain smeared over pale skin. Malfoy allowed it.

They were talking, or at least, Snape was talking. That much Neville could see. Snape’s hair clung to his thin cheeks, dripping down the back of his neck, and Malfoy stared down at Snape’s palm over his Mark, every once in a while nodding without raising his eyes. 

Mere seconds passed, but they felt like hours. 

Neville swiped away a fresh layer of fog across the window with his palm, and tried not to choke over the desire to know what they were saying. The back of his neck burned; he was achingly aware that someone could burst in and catch him looking at any moment. 

It felt imperative that nobody else see Draco Malfoy looking scared, wet and in pain.

Snape’s hand lifted again, then, and reached towards Malfoy’s face. Neville held his breath, pressing against his lungs, as Snape’s long fingers quickly tucked the wet locks of Malfoy’s hair behind his ear, uncovering his face. 

Neville waited for the hex to come, for Malfoy to jump back and explode at him in rage. But Malfoy only stood there as Snape’s hand touched beneath his chin and lifted his face to meet his gaze. They looked at each other, eye to eye through the pounding rain.

If anything, Malfoy seemed to lean forward into Snape’s touch. Neville’s throat closed up at the way Malfoy’s shoulders slumped, and his spine shrank. 

Snape said one last thing, then. Something that looked final. He moved his hand to Malfoy’s shoulder and shook him gently, once.

Malfoy looked into his face, his neck tense, then he said one word with a tense nod.

Snape stepped away from him, his wet robes pooling around his ankles and his _lumos_ pointed down at the grass. Neville turned to look back at Malfoy in the pool of watery light. But then, in a startling whoosh of black and white, Malfoy was gone.

He had Apparated away, right at the edges of the Hogwarts wards. Just like that. 

Neville blinked hard, disbelieving his own eyes, as he and Snape both stared at the empty spot where Malfoy had once stood. 

Panic flooded Neville’s veins as the reality of the empty patch of grass smacked him in the face.

He needed to know why Draco’s Mark was hurting, and when he was coming back, _if_ he was coming back, where he had gone. He needed to know if he would ever be able to track him down again, what Snape had just told him, what final word Draco had sai—

The door slammed open.

“Merlin, Nev, you still perched there? Did you cast a leg-locker curse on yourself and couldn’t get up?”

Neville jumped in place as Dean and Seamus came spilling into the room, stumbling over themselves as they laughed. The sounds of the party ending echoed down the rest of the stairs.

Neville hadn’t realized he’d been sweating until he wiped a drop off his brow and out of his eye.

“Just . . . just fell asleep here, I guess,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

Dean tipped back his head and laughed like that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. His words were slightly slurred as he clung to Seamus, weaving towards their beds. 

“Ha! You’re a good man, Neville. Keeping nightly vigil over Sprout’s kingdom. Good on you, mate.”

“Never change, Nev,” Seamus added as he flung himself down onto his face on top of the covers. Dean followed suit a second later, and neither one of them even fidgeted as their breathing started to slow.

“Night, guys,” Neville said under his breath. 

He looked once around their too-silent room, his gaze skittering over Harry’s and Ron’s abandoned beds.

When he finally turned back to the window, something fluttered at the edges of his vision. He noticed just in time to catch something black and billowing striding out of view back into the castle at the base of the tower. 

So, Snape wasn’t waiting for Malfoy to return.

He was really gone.

Something cold seemed to wash over Neville’s skin, freezing him from the inside out. He knew, with a sharp conviction, that he couldn’t crawl into bed and fall asleep now. Despite the exhaustion from the week pulling thickly at his limbs, and the cold weight of dread currently settling in his chest, he couldn’t fathom lying down on his plush, red and gold sheets when Malfoy was out there, somewhere, in pain and seemingly alone. 

The thought alone made Neville sick. 

He grabbed the blanket from his bed and wrapped it up in his arms, pausing to listen at the dormitory door to make sure that no one was left down in the Common Room. He snuck down the stairs and pulled the blanket about himself, shivering even though the room was still faintly warm from the embers of the dying fire.

He settled into a wingback chair near the grate and hugged his knees to his chest, hating the fact that his body still felt too crumpled up. Too long, and out of his control.

It should have been him, he thought.

Neville’s mind betrayed him as it whispered to him that it should have been _his_ fingers brushing Malfoy’s hair behind his ear. His hand on Malfoy’s thin shoulder. His body sprinting with him across the grass. His palm covering the Mark as Malfoy’s face twisted in pain.

(“ _You’re utterly harmless,_ ” Malfoy had told him once, what felt like lifetimes ago. But it hadn’t sounded terrible or filled with scorn. No . . . It had—it had sounded like the gentle rasp the mint leaves made when they delicately brushed across his sleeve in the weak sun.)

The next thing Neville knew, Ginny was shaking him awake. 

“You’ll miss breakfast,” she said, matter of factly and without asking him why the hell he’d just slept in a chair.

Neville blinked and looked around him, at the sunlight streaming through the windows, and at his housemates all lining up to crawl out of the door and head to the Hall. He gave her a quick nod of thanks before rushing up the stairs, pulling on wrinkled robes, his head fuzzy as if he hadn’t actually slept a wink.

Thirty minutes later, Neville was just finishing his last bite of a dry piece of toast, half-standing from the bench and preparing to sprint to class so he wouldn’t be late.

And then, out of nowhere, Draco Malfoy strode into the Great Hall. Neville’s toast halted halfway to his mouth.

Malfoy looked terrible, and like he was still wearing the same robes from the night before. His skin looked grey, and his hair wasn’t styled, and his hands shook as he flung them down at the end of the Slytherin table, as if he would have fallen without the balance. 

None of the other Slytherin seventh years were still there. Nobody else even noticed Malfoy was in the room.

Neville glanced quickly to the head table, still awkwardly holding his toast, and he saw that Snape was looking straight at Malfoy with a penetrating stare, his hands held uncharacteristically in front of him in a tight, anxious-looking grip.

Then, for the first time all morning, Neville realized that the Carrows were gone from their seats. 

When he looked back at the Slytherin table, Malfoy was reaching toward the nearest platter of food with a starved look in his eyes. His shaking hand hovered over the platter of leftover toast and fruit. 

Then he pulled his hand back, picked up the nearest half-drunk cup of tea instead, and knocked it back in one gulp before he turned and strode out of the Hall, running a hand through his hair with his wand gripped tightly in the other.

He didn’t look at Neville as he left. Didn’t even seem to notice he was there.

Without even thinking about it, Neville pocketed an apple.

Two hours later, when Neville purposefully walked the long way round in class by Malfoy’s desk, and casually dropped the apple straight into Malfoy’s lap without looking, he heard Malfoy’s surprised intake of breath. Could feel his eyes boring into his back as he walked away to take his usual seat. 

Neville felt something strange and tight in his chest when he saw Malfoy sitting on the nearest tucked away bench after class, hunched over and eating the apple as fast as he possibly could.

And even though Malfoy didn’t catch his gaze that time, Neville still felt watched. Felt the heat clear, grey eyes in the center of his back.

\--

After that, Neville made it a habit to sit in a spot where he could look out the windows of Gryffindor tower onto the grass in the evenings. He would look up from his homework every minute to quickly scan the dark lawns, searching for a spark of white moving through the shadows.

He knew it was insanity. He knew it was depraved. He knew it was obsessive—that every one of his housemates would probably spit on him if they knew that he was waiting for Draco Malfoy to sprint across the grounds, hugging his Dark Mark to his chest. If they knew that Neville was not watching this because he wanted to spy for the Army, or to inform Harry, or to do anything _good_.

Still, he watched. 

Only a week into this new arrangement, Neville looked up midway through a piss-poor attempt at a Transfiguration essay, pressed his quill to his lips out of habit as he scanned the grass, and he saw it:

A flash of white. Black robes. A familiar body sprinting through the dark.

Alone.

A pulse jumped through him. His skin erupted in hot shivers. He itched to go, to run, to fly across the grass in pursuit . . .

Then Neville remembered that he was sitting in the Common Room, surrounded by determined, purpose-filled, fired-up Dumbledore’s Army members.

Panic flooded his stomach. It was too late to somehow sneak through the castle, break out through a door, and get to him now. He would never make it in time, and even if he did, he’d probably have a trail of Gryffindors chasing behind him, eager to stop the Death Eater from getting away. 

So Neville watched, helpless, trying to look as casual as possible, as Malfoy made it to the edges of the grounds, near the start of the forest. Malfoy looked up once at the sky, taking long, deep breaths as he held the back of his neck with both hands.

Then, Neville’s world tilted completely onto its side:

As the moonlight illuminated the pale lines of his face, Malfoy glanced straight up at Gryffindor Tower. 

Straight at Neville.

Neville threw caution to the wind and pressed his palms to the glass, hoping against hope that it wasn’t just a coincidence. That somehow, even from the distance, even through the darkness . . . That somehow Malfoy could see that it was _him._

They stared at each other. Neville’s heart pounded uncontrollably, pressing painfully against his ribs. 

Malfoy’s hair blew across his face, and he reached up to push it out of his eyes. His left fist was clenched and shaking, pressed into his side.

Then, after what felt like a desperately long time, but was only a few seconds, Malfoy looked away. He widened his stance, closed his eyes, and Apparated before Neville could even release his breath.

Out of nowhere, a plan sprung up in Neville’s mind, sparked to life by the sight of the empty patch of grass. He slammed his book shut and reached for his discarded robes where they lay bunched on the floor, then yanked them on as he strode through the room, his head steady and high.

“You going out there?” someone asked him, concern in their voice. “Only, it’s past curfew, Nev. The patrols . . .”

“What’s happening?” someone else piped up. “Something to do with the DA? Can we help?”

Neville turned back to face the room full of his housemates, all looking at him eagerly, as if he had some sort of mission to offer them. Some answer to it all.

“Er, need to meet up with Luna,” he said, the lie flowing shockingly easy from his lips. “She might have new intel on the Order. It’s . . . it can’t wait.”

They all nodded as one, their eyes focused and wide. Nobody questioned him on how he and Luna had supposedly communicated. Nobody begged to go with him. Nobody begged him to stop.

It dawned on Neville that he’d only ever seen Harry be treated this way—with such absolute, complete trust placed in his decisions (when the tide of public opinion wasn’t running against him, at least).

Neville struggled to swallow down the wave of guilt that he was deceiving them all, just a sickening imposter standing in Harry Potter’s empty shoes. That he was about to betray the Order and everything it stood for. That he had just opened his mouth and effortlessly lied to their faces. 

(He thought of second year, the first time he ever saw Draco Malfoy play Quidditch. How his grey eyes had lit up as he soared through the clear skies, his glinting hair and his green robes flapping in the breeze, a pure look of happiness across his face in the light of the sun. And Neville had hated the sight of it, then. _Hated_ it. But now . . . but _now_ . . .)

His mind was made up, whether he liked it or not.

Neville slipped through the door on silent feet after a last wave goodbye, pulled his cloak tighter around his body, and set off.

In the end, it took him nearly two hours to navigate his way all the way down to the Slytherin dungeons, where he suspected, based on what he’d seen from the tower, that Malfoy had been using a side door to exit the school. 

He held his breath as he crept through the corridors, painfully aware of every errant whisper of noise winding through the distant halls. Never had he thought he would be so grateful for all the roaming walks he took last year. He slipped through well-known shortcuts and passageways in the dark, wand out and ready in his hand, his heart thumping like mad at every distant footstep he heard echo, or every hiss of voices from students or teachers on night patrol. 

But, miraculously, two long and tense hours later, with sweat pouring down his back and his stomach in knots, Neville finally came to the door in the depths of the dungeons which he knew lead to the outside grounds if only one knew the password.

Which, he did not. But the near pitch darkness of the alcove was a perfect place for him to hide, three hallways down from the Slytherin Common Room and so out of the way it would be madness for anyone to take the time to patrol down here.

He carefully tucked himself back into an alcove and slowly slid to the floor, pausing every inch or so to make sure he couldn’t hear anyone creeping down the black hallway, about to catch him in the act.

With a shaky hand, Neville cast a charm hidden in the folds of his robe to see the time once he was seated; it was just past one in the morning.

Like a fire being doused by a bucket of water, the tense adrenaline from the last few hours suddenly exited his body in one great whoosh. His skin felt cold and hollow after. His lungs deflated, and his long legs clammy and numb.

He didn’t know what the hell he was doing. 

Didn’t know why he wasn’t back in his warm bed getting a good night’s sleep. Or sitting in the Common Room with his housemates. Or doing something actually useful and planning for upcoming meetings.

Didn’t know why he was currently crouched in a scary, black corner of the castle, waiting in the middle of the night to catch a Death Eater on his way back from most likely meeting up with You-Know-Who, plotting how they would murder Harry Potter, the first boy Neville ever called his _friend_.

His eleven-year-old-self would die of shame if he could see him now, Neville knew. Would probably cry himself to sleep, too horrified even to speak. Neville broke out into a cold sweat under his robes at the thought.

But he didn’t leave.

Neville wasn’t tired, his eyes not even drooping, and he watched the shadows flicker across the cool dungeon stone as he settled in to wait, having no clue how long Malfoy would be gone, or if he would even return.

He thought of Harry.

First year, his first day, nearly sick to his stomach with nerves. When he’d followed the line of other first years off the train and clambered into a little rowboat, trying not to get the hem of his robes wet from the lake, or fall on his face. 

And he’d looked up, and realized that he would be sharing a Hogwarts boat with _Harry Potter_.

Harry—the boy Neville had grown up hearing whispers about at every one of his Gran’s parties. Other ancient wizarding families holding fancy cocktails in their elegant robes, ignoring Neville where he sat very still in the corner so he wouldn’t knock anything over, leaning towards each other over canapes as they murmured about _the child_.

Where he was, and who those Muggles taking care of him were, and if the “ _other Purebloods_ ” had any merit to their claim that the child could be the next Dark Lord.

“ _You simply cannot be a Squib_ ,” his Gran would say to him in an exasperated voice, when he was crying because he couldn’t magically block a toy ball being thrown at him by the other kids out on the lawns. “ _Think of Harry Potter, defeating He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as an infant. And he of mixed blood. You, a Longbottom, cannot be a Squib._ ”

And then, just a few years later, as easy as blinking, Neville had found himself sitting in a rowboat mere inches away from _the child_.

Neville remembered it all, so vividly it might have been the clearest memory he possessed. 

He remembered watching the castle firelight as it reflected in Harry’s glasses, painting his brown skin with swaths of flickering gold. He remembered Harry Potter’s hands held tightly together in his lap, the way his mouth had dropped open at the sight of Hogwarts in all its glory. He remembered the way Harry’s thick black hair had blown into a messy tangle with the breeze. How Harry had brushed it out of his eyes so that he wouldn’t miss a moment of the journey.

The gentle splash of the oars magically rowing through the water. The hushed gasps and excited inhales of his classmates around him. Hagrid’s oil lamp leading the way, like a tiny sun glowing gold in the dark.

And then Harry Potter had turned to him, washing Neville in the intensity of his gaze. He’d smiled, and his green eyes had lit up with the brightness of summer grass in a June sun. 

It had taken Neville’s breath away, that _he_ should be the chosen witness of such pure, unbridled joy, unlike anything he had ever experienced before in his short life. 

Neville had been struck then with the mad desire to tell Harry Potter about the first time he ever showed magic. That it was _not_ when he was eight years old being held by his ankles out a window—that that story, the one he had owned and accepted and retold, was not really his own.

He wanted to tell Harry Potter about the time when he was five. When he was lying on his stomach out on the grounds of his Gran’s house, alone with his chin on his hands, staring at a line of dying nettles as they withered away in the hot sun. How Neville had reached out a finger, suddenly filled with focus, and gently touched the stem.

How the drooping nettles had instantly straightened at his touch, and the leaves flushed a brilliant, living green, turning once more to the sky. 

Years later, the night Dean’s shirt rode up on his back during a DA meeting, Neville would realize in an onslaught of confusing emotion that that night with Harry on the boat had been the start of it all. It had been more than simple awe at meeting Harry Potter on his boat ride to Hogwarts. More than the intoxicating rush of a first friendship, and finding a home.

No . . . it had also been green, green eyes. It had been messy hair, and full lips pulled back in a brilliant smile, and, eventually, the way Harry’s five o’clock shadow softened the strong lines of his jaw.

The latch in the door creaked.

Someone was coming in.

Neville’s body ripped itself from the hazy lull of his daydreams, then sharpened into intense, thrumming focus as the secret door started to shift on its hinges, letting out a low groan.

_Please be Draco_ , Neville thought, because it suddenly occurred to him that it could be anybody coming through that door. It could be a Death Eater (a different Death Eater . . .), or one of the Carrows, or Snape, or the werewolf. 

It could be He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Na—

A muddied black shoe peaked through the slit in the door, followed by a long line of robes in the dim moonlight streaming in from outside.

Neville took a careful breath, still tucked into the shadows, and shivers erupted down his arms at the sharp rush of mint that entered his lungs.

It was him.

Neville knew it with a conviction deep in his stomach. 

He was alive, and he had returned, and he didn’t look injured, and it was _him._

Malfoy stepped fully into the corridor, the black hood of his cloak pulled up over his head to hide his face and hair.

Neville held his breath as Malfoy walked by where he hid in the shadows. He put his head down onto his knees to hide the glow of his skin, suddenly realizing that he hadn’t actually thought of a way to reveal himself without getting immediately cursed where he hid in the dark. 

Malfoy’s steps slowly echoed across the stone, his breathing heavy and slow. Neville fought down a wave of panic that he was getting away, that his chance was over before it had even begun.

But then:

“Show your hands. Toss your wand in the hallway. _Now_.”

Neville jumped in surprise. His head smacked against the stone behind him as he looked up to see Malfoy’s wand just inches from his nose, shining a light so intense Neville couldn’t see anything but piercing, blinding white.

He flung his hands up on the air and tossed his wand toward Malfoy’s feet, then squinted against the glare as a shocked numbness coated over his skin.

“It’s me,” he said, trying not to wince in fear as Malfoy’s shining wand moved down to point straight at his heart. “Malfoy, it’s me.”

Just as suddenly as it had come on, the light went out.

Neville blinked in the fresh wash of pitch blackness. His body shook against the stone, and all he could see was a ghost of the orb of light still burned into his vision.

Then, slowly, Malfoy’s face came into view.

HIs pale skin seemed to glow in the darkness of the hallway, framed by the black halo of the hood of his cloak. He stared down at Neville crouching on the ground with complete exhaustion written across his features, sagging his eyes and drooping his mouth.

He was panting for breath, and Neville noticed his fingers shaking where they gripped his wand. His hair was clinging to his forehead with what looked like a sheen of sweat, and his robes were hanging slightly crooked around his chest.

Slowly, Malfoy’s wand dropped even more, until it was pointed at Neville’s knees. The sight of Draco Malfoy looking too tired to put up any more of a fight after confronting an enemy in the shadows made Neville’s chest constrict, and his stomach do an odd, almost heartbroken flip.

It looked wrong, like something fundamental in the world had been shifted out of place. Neville wanted to put it back.

Slowing his breathing and licking his lips to speak, Neville stared up at Malfoy where he loomed over him. He kept his hands raised and tried to act like it was perfectly normal to be doing this on a Tuesday night.

“Where have you been?” Neville asked, breaking the long silence.

Malfoy stared at him, his brow furrowing for just a moment. “The manor.”

Neville sensed a thousand more answers in the set of Malfoy’s jaw, the circles under his eyes and the disheveled state of his hair, but he didn’t comment on any of them. He slowly lowered his hands back to his knees, holding Malfoy’s gaze as he forced himself to look relaxed.

“Sorry I scared you,” Neville whispered.

Malfoy’s lips twisted. “You didn’t scare me,” he spat.

His voice sent rolling echoes down the black hallway. Malfoy glanced quickly toward the end of the corridor, raising his wand, then he swallowed hard and seemed to reluctantly face Neville again.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed, keeping his voice down.

Neville swallowed, and his face felt hot. “I don’t know.”

“How long have you been waiting here?”

Neville resisted casting another charm to check the time and instead shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“How can you not know,” Malfoy huffed under his breath. Then his body turned tense. “Was it . . . was it since I saw . . . ?”

Neville’s mind was filled with the image of Malfoy standing alone, flanked by the black trees of the forest with his face turned up to the dark sky.

“About then, yes.” Neville kept forcing his body to relax, letting feeling creep back into his fingers and toes. “Took me a while to . . . you know, get here. But.”

The silence dragged on. An unfamiliar, bold feeling started to crackle in Neville’s body, swelling his chest as he let it flame into life behind his ribs. He kept his eyes on Malfoy where he stood, still tense with exhaustion, as he carefully scooted to the side, making room beside himself in the small alcove space to sit.

Neville’s heart stopped beating as grey eyes flickered to the empty stretch of stone. Malfoy fully lowered his wand, slipped it into his pocket, and stared.

Just when Neville was emotionally preparing himself for Malfoy to raise his chin and walk away, Malfoy slowly pulled the hood back from his head. He knelt, felt around a bit with his hands, then picked up Neville’s wand where it had rolled into the shadows. He stepped forward and held it out to Neville, lying across his palm.

Neville was very careful to take it without touching Malfoy’s skin. Once he’d tucked it away within his robes, he stared straight ahead as Malfoy gracefully sank down beside him, his knees pulled up and his robes pooled about his feet. 

A fresh rush of mint filled Neville’s lungs, coupled with a wash of sweat and warmth and something else. Something undeniably human and _him_. They sat silently, not fidgeting, their sides pressed together in the small space. Heat radiated through layers of robes in the dark.

It was the most intimate Neville had ever physically felt with another person, and he nearly laughed at himself. The ridiculousness of his life: Neville Longbottom, mistake-Gryffindor, experiencing this much physical contact for the first time from being crammed in a dusty alcove with the Slytherin he’d been terrified of for six years. 

He could hear every swallow Malfoy took, close in his ear. Could hear his robes rustle as he shifted. Smell the skin of his neck.

After interminably long minutes, Malfoy’s breathing had finally calmed so much that Neville could barely hear it. Malfoy leaned his head back on the wall, his chest rising and falling in the rhythm Neville recognized from that day he’d caught Malfoy stumbling out of the Room of Requirement.

Neville looked over at him, then, and was shocked at how close their faces were. Malfoy’s eyes were closed, his neck bobbing as he swallowed. Neville only had to lean forward mere inches and his nose would press into Malfoy’s cheek.

Through the darkness, Neville could just make out dark smudges on the skin of Malfoy’s neck, wrapping around his throat in long stripes.

They looked horrifyingly like marks from a hand.

Neville swallowed and reached up tentative fingers to rest on the collar of Malfoy’s robes. Malfoy flinched at the touch, just barely, but then didn’t pull away.

Something burned in Neville’s eyes as he waited for his throat to be clear enough to speak. “I don’t know the spell to heal these,” he whispered, regret seeping into his voice.

Malfoy’s mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed closed. “What, you didn’t get beat up enough your whole life to have learned it for yourself?”

Neville thought he ought to be offended, but the irritation didn’t come. Instead, something in the tone of Malfoy’s voice made him do something unthinkable.

He reached out, twisting his arm awkwardly in the confines of the space, and he allowed his fingers to gently touch the skin of Malfoy’s neck. 

Shivers erupted across Malfoy’s throat, and Neville felt the soft roll of muscle press into his fingertips as Malfoy swallowed. 

(He’d dreamt of this, hadn’t he? Bare skin on skin. Hungry, wet lips and a tipped back neck . . .)

Neville yanked his hand away. It was too much—the contact. His fingertips ached like they’d been burned.

Malfoy didn’t seem to notice. He only hummed in question, his eyes still closed, and Neville realized that he’d never answered his question. He begged his throat to work.

“Guess I must have forgotten.”

Malfoy’s eyes opened, then, and he barely turned his head so that he could see Neville’s face. His eyes were like two beads of light in the dark. “I don’t think you forget much, actually,” he whispered, his brow a bit furrowed like there was a mystery he was trying to figure out.

Neville had never heard Malfoy’s voice sound like that before. So soft, and muted. So raspy, and deep, and _close_ —

Neville found he couldn’t respond to what Malfoy had just said. The horrible feeling of being an imposter burned like fire again under his skin, and he didn’t know why.

He cleared his throat, wincing at how loud it sounded, then dropped his gaze to Malfoy’s knees, where one of Malfoy’s hands was tapping a tense rhythm on his thigh with the tips of his fingers.

“Are you parents alright?” Neville asked after another moment.

Malfoy’s face quivered when Neville glanced up, some waver of emotion, then it settled once more into blankness—resigned exhaustion. 

“My father is out of Azkaban now,” he said.

Neville couldn’t bring himself to say that that was good, but it seemed Malfoy wasn’t expecting him to.

“That’s . . . I heard about that,” Neville said. 

Then, when Malfoy only gave a small, sharp nod, Neville pressed on. “Your mum?”

Malfoy’s brows went up, so quickly it might not have happened at all. “She’s . . .” He paused, then swallowed. “She’s alive. At the manor.”

Neville hummed, then hated himself for not having a better response. Before he could stutter his way through something awful, Malfoy suddenly spoke. 

“And yours?”

Neville frowned. “My . . . ?”

“Your parents.”

Shock lanced through Neville’s body. Never, in all his years at Hogwarts, had anyone _ever_ asked him how his parents were doing. 

For a long minute, he couldn’t speak. He tried to blink embarrassing water out of his eyes, hoping against hope that Malfoy hadn’t noticed how his stupid, small question had made Neville almost lose it in the dark.

But Malfoy’s knee subtly pressed against his, just for a moment, and instead of making Neville want to cry even more, it actually calmed the churning, hot wave of emotion that was lodged in his throat.

He swallowed one last time and took a breath, giving a firm nod. The truth, instead of his usual go-to, trite answer, poured out of him. “They’re . . . the same. Always the same. Never any different, or better.”

“Can they talk to you?” Malfoy asked.

Neville shook his head. For the first time, he was glad that they couldn’t easily look at each other the way they were sitting.

“No,” he said to the opposite wall. Then, without warning, the words came flooding out in a hushed whisper, halting and unfamiliar on his tongue. “My . . . my mum. Every time I visit, my whole life, she’s given me a gum wrapper before I leave. Just the wrapper. The nurses give her a piece whenever they know I’m coming, cause they know she likes it. I think she throws the gum away. Doesn’t know what to do with that part. And I . . .” He almost chickened out, then pressed on as he inhaled another soft whiff of mint. “I’ve kept every one. I don’t throw them out.”

Malfoy didn’t laugh. He didn’t even move, and his exhale came out unsteady. “I would keep them all,” he said, his low voice sounding deeply earnest in the dark. “I’d never let them be taken.”

A fresh silence fell on them as Neville struggled to breathe. It dawned on him that this was the longest he had ever spent touching Malfoy—or even touching another human being, for that matter.

Malfoy’s warmth had bled all the way through Neville’s robes and up his whole left side, shielding him from the freezing press of the hard stone. If Neville listened closely, he imagined he could hear the actual beat of Malfoy’s pulse, mixed with the tapping of his pale fingers on his thigh, which hadn’t stopped.

For the first time since Malfoy sat down, Neville noticed that the rhythm wasn’t random.

“Are you . . .” he started. Malfoy seemed to notice where Neville was looking and the tapping immediately stopped. “Were you counting something? Just then?”

Malfoy glanced at him quickly, then tucked his hands between his legs out of sight. “Yes.”

Neville wanted to ask more, but the set of Malfoy’s jaw told him it would be a mistake. He found himself in the position of wanting to preserve this moment, this conversation, at all costs. 

He chose one of the hundreds of questions flying through his head at random.

“Is Snape protecting you, then? While you’re at the school?”

Malfoy didn’t ask how Neville had even thought to ask such a thing. His face tightened, and Neville wondered if he was imagining the quick sheen over his eyes before Malfoy blinked it away.

“He’s trying,” Malfoy eventually said.

“I haven’t seen you around the others, much. The other Slytherins. The last two years.”

Neville expected silence, but instead Malfoy immediately spoke, as if he’d been expecting this question and had an answer prepared.

“Yes, well, I may have known some of them my whole life, but their families aren’t . . . I mean, they’re Purebloods, they believe . . . but they don’t fully . . .” he trailed off.

Neville wondered when the sound of Draco Malfoy stuttering over his words ceased to sound abnormal to him.

“We’re starting up Dumbledore’s Army again,” he said, before he could stop himself, then he wanted to punch himself in the face.

Malfoy’s entire body flinched at the name, curling away from Neville and into the corner. His hand started rapidly tapping again on his thigh, the same rhythm as before.

“Why are you telling me this?” he hissed.

Neville tried to stay calm, not to burst out in a thousand rushing and pathetic apologies which Malfoy would probably mock over for the next year. 

“I don’t usually lie to you,” Neville finally settled on saying. 

But that only seemed to rile Malfoy up even further. His chin shot up, and his spine was straight, and Neville thought he might be about to leap up to his feet and stride away. His heart sank.

“Aren’t you afraid I’m going to go to the Carrows right now?” Malfoy said, no longer trying to keep his voice low. “Or to Snape? To my father and his friends? I could get you shut down instantly. Or _worse_. Faster than you could even think to beg for mercy. I could—”

“You won’t do any of those things,” Neville cut in. He met his fierce gaze and didn’t blink. “You won’t.”

His pulse roared in his veins, partly at the rush of fear that he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life, and partly at the wave of intense relief he’d experienced seeing Malfoy be _Malfoy_ for just a few, precious seconds. 

Draco Malfoy—proud and cutting, quick and sharp. Not the empty, lifeless shell Neville had watched him become for over a year.

He hadn’t realized he’d been stupidly yearning for it until he heard that spark again. It reminded him, unthinkably, of bright green eyes smiling on a boat. 

Malfoy stared at him, his mouth half open, then he scoffed. 

Neville raised his chin before Malfoy could cut him off. “Either you won’t do any of that, because that isn’t what you actually want to do, or I really am as stupid as everyone says. Either way, you win.”

“I win?” Malfoy said incredulously.

Neville just shrugged. “Well, like I said, maybe I’m just stupid. You’d be proven right.”

There was a heavy, pulsing silence for a long moment, so long Neville found himself dreading what Malfoy would say next. Wishing he could just predict him for _once_ instead of being constantly whipped around by whatever came out of Malfoy’s mouth.

But Malfoy only surprised him again by taking a long breath and shaking his head down at his knees. He seemed to deflate. Neville wanted to slap him in the arm and tell him to insult him once more.

(Wanted to put his palm back on Malfoy’s neck, feel the rapid pulse of his beating heart through his warm skin, alive and real.)

Malfoy’s neck dipped. “You’re not stupid, Longbottom” he finally said. 

Neville closed his eyes at the sound of his name, whispered deep and low so close to his ear.

For a moment, he was tempted to thank him—say something embarrassing and overly-soft which would only serve to strip himself bare, left defenceless with his deepest fears on full display. Then he realized that thanking someone for showing basic decency would only prove that he was a doormat—the opposite of Gryffindor valour. The opposite of Harry.

But other words of thanks rushed to his lips instead, and his body coiled tight with nerves as he slowly let them out.

“I should thank you for . . . for the hex,” he said. He cleared his throat. “The train. You know.”

Malfoy turned to face him for the first time in minutes, and Neville found himself curling his spine, holding his breath as Malfoy’s eyes flew up his body in a quick swoop. Neville wondered if he could tell that he had gotten smaller recently. If Malfoy was among the people in the halls who whispered that Neville was finally growing into himself. Finally looking good.

But there was a pulse of something else there, hidden in Malfoy’s eyes. Something deep which flashed through them like the flicker of a flame as Malfoy looked from his stomach, to his chest, to his face.

Unconsciously, Neville found himself shifting his knee closer to Malfoy’s leg. Their hands were very close where they both rested on their own thighs. If Neville moved an inch, their fingers would be touching. 

Malfoy held his gaze. “That sort of thing . . . It’s happened to you before.”

It wasn’t really phrased as a question. Neville swallowed. “Yeah. Every year. I . . . I wish you hadn’t seen that.” He lowered his gaze, staring down at their incredibly close hands.

Malfoy softly snorted, and it sent a fluttering warmth down Neville’s spine despite the block of ice sitting in his chest as he remembered the train.

“Are your Gryffindor sensibilities making you regret that I hexed them, now? Losing sleep over the agonizing remorse?”

Neville tried to grin where he still stared at their hands, but he couldn’t quite manage it. He shook his head. “No, I just . . . didn’t want you to see that,” he said.

Malfoy’s fingertips started to softly tap again against his robes. He sighed, and for a long time there was only the sound of their breaths.

Neville’s eyes had adjusted to the dark so that he could see every detail of Malfoy’s robes. Every line and curve and tiny freckle on the skin of his pale, thin hand.

He looked down at his own hand, the blunt, thick fingers with dirt still under the nails, and suppressed a shudder. 

(He thought he saw Malfoy’s fingers slowly moving towards his, thought he felt the press of Malfoy’s thigh against his own, but it could have all been in his head, could have been a terrible dream.)

Then, like a knife through the air, Malfoy drew in a quick, sharp breath.

“We can’t do ever do this again,” he said in a whisper. “Speak like this. Here, or anywhere.”

As if on cue, the muffled echo of distance footsteps reached them in the alcove. Someone was talking, and a loud bang signalled the Slytherin Common Room door opening and closing. 

In the fresh wave of thick silence, Neville nodded. Much as he didn’t want to admit it, he understood. They were crouched in the corner, almost waiting to be attacked from either side. The Death Eater and the leader of Dumbledore’s bloody Army. 

It couldn’t happen again.

He struggled to breathe. Despair wrapped around his throat and tugged like an unbreakable, black chord. Unbidden, the desperate question he’d been longing to ask flew from his lips, now that he knew he wouldn’t have a chance to ask it ever again.

“Why?” he asked, turning to face him. “Why did you do it? The tower.”

Malfoy’s expression turned to ice, threatening and hard. “I didn’t do it,” he said through a tightly clenched jaw. His hand clenched into a fist in his robes. “I . . . I didn’t know they were bringing Greyback. He—the Dark Lord . . . my parents were going to be . . . I lowered my wand. I didn’t—”

“No, no, no,” Neville said. He realized with a start that his hand was on Malfoy’s knee. He held it, his heart racing, as he held still and waited for Malfoy to meet his gaze.

He was taking deep, angry breaths through his nose, and his chest was shaking. Neville felt a stab of pain through his own ribs.

“I know you lowered your wand,” he said. He squeezed Malfoy’s knee as Malfoy’s gaze slightly softened, then reluctantly let it go, his fingers trailing from the fabric.

“I know that,” he said again. “But I meant . . . _me_. Why me? Why did you do it?”

His body shivered, as if remembering the crackling spell of Malfoy’s magic surrounding him that night.

Malfoy looked at him for a long moment before staring back down at his tapping fingers. He gently shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“What changed?”

“Everything. Everything has changed.” 

Malfoy’s eyes were shining bright grey in the darkness. Neville had the sudden, ridiculous urge to ask him what his own eyes looked like. Probably just a muddy, dull brown . . . but he still wanted to know.

Before he could say something he would regret, though, Malfoy spoke again. “You? Why did you do it?”

He was speaking of the courtyard, Neville knew. He felt embarrassment burn in his cheeks. 

He looked at their fingers, their pinkies just a hair’s width apart. “I don’t know. I want to know.” He sighed, and his pinky twitched against his robes. “She would have taken your hand.”

Malfoy huffed through his nose. “Would have’s are irrelevant. She did not, in the end. That’s what actually happened. She went with you.”

“But she would have.”

Malfoy sounded frustrated. Neville waited for everything to escalate again, wickedly excited despite everything just to hear the spark one more time, but Malfoy only rested his head back against the stone and closed his eyes.

“I wish you hadn’t seen that either,” he said, so softly Neville could barely hear.

“What—see someone trusting you?”

Malfoy just shrugged a shoulder, and didn’t answer. Then, “How much did you hear? Later?” he asked.

Neville winced at the mention of the Carrows, then hated himself for it. “Enough.”

Malfoy laughed through his nose, harsh and grating, and a twisted smile turned his mouth down at the corner. “I’m sure that did wonders for your opinion of me,” he said.

Neville’s chest ached. “Malfoy . . . that’s not—”

“Don’t,” he whispered, raising a hand to cut Neville off.

Something about the look on Malfoy’s face told Neville that their time was nearly up. His stomach flipped over itself, and his heart beat wildly against his ribs. He clenched his hands into fists within his robes to keep them from visibly shaking.

There was one question, one question he would never forgive himself if he didn’t ask. And even though he would rather have said a million other fragile, secret things, Neville thought of his DA coin in his pocket, and forced himself to speak.

“Do you know where Harry is?” he asked, hating the way his voice was unsteady. “If he’s been spotted? If he’s been found?”

To his surprise, Malfoy calmly looked at him then, and an emotion Neville _never_ thought he would see after asking that question settled thickly in Malfoy’s eyes. It was sadness. 

“No,” he said.

More than he recognized the thrum of his own magic, more than he missed his dad’s wand, Neville found he believed him. 

He realized they’d been staring at each other for a very long time, longer than they had all night. Malfoy parted his lips, licked them and exhaled an unsteady breath. The air between them started to pulse and thrum, as if magic itself was drawing them closer, letting them see clearly through the heavy shadows.

Neville’s mouth was dry. He couldn’t look away from Draco’s lashes and the way they draped across his eyes. Something he had never felt was burning under his skin. He could taste the breath leaving Draco’s full lips on his own tongue. Could feel the heat of Draco’s body up his own stomach and chest. 

He didn’t understand the way his stomach was churning, the way he wanted to reach forward and pull Draco closer with a fistful of his robes.

He didn’t _understand_ , and yet . . . in the deepest parts of him . . . he knew.

He knew, and it was the most beautiful thing he had ever experienced in his life. More gorgeous than the magic that gave the nettles life again, their leaves turned towards the sky. More heartbreaking than his mum trying to mumble his name.

It terrified him.

Draco’s eyes fluttered down to his lips for only a moment, but Neville saw it all the same. The simple, raw fact of it took his breath away. Horrifyingly, he thought he might cry. He blinked hard to keep it at bay.

Nothing existed on earth except Draco’s unsteady breathing, and the pulse in his neck. Draco’s hand slowly curling into Neville’s robes over his thigh. Draco’s hair falling forward from behind his ear, nearly brushing against Neville’s cheek. Draco’s eyes looking straight into his, blown wide open and shining with something that looked like fear. Like want. Like confusion. Like despair.

Neville was so close now that Draco’s eyes were nothing but blurs in his vision. Draco’s warm exhales danced across Neville’s upper lip. Neville could hear his heartbeat. Could feel his pulse where his own hand was barely resting on his arm.

“ _Come with me_ ,” Neville wanted to beg him. He wanted to press his cheek to Draco’s and hold it there, skin to skin. “ _Come to the Order. Come to safety. Come to this side. Come to me._ ”

But he couldn’t. His throat nearly choked him as he tried, and the words wouldn’t come. 

“You’re harmless, Longbottom,” Draco breathed then, ghosting the words across Neville’s skin.

Neville closed his eyes. He still couldn’t speak. Draco’s voice surrounded him like the rush of his magic, and Neville wondered why he had ever wanted to be called anything other than harmless. Anything other than Longbottom.

He heard Draco’s swallow. The way his tongue rolled in his mouth. 

“Longbottom . . .”

Neville thought he might moan; he barely managed to swallow it down. Their noses were touching now, the barest hint of warm skin. Neville thought he would drown in it, suffocate in it, fade away forever into a sea-like abyss where he was nothing but the warm body in Draco’s arms, held close, with silk hair on his cheek and no Army, no Marks, no war . . .

A door slammed.

They sprang apart as footsteps once again echoed down the hall, seeming to come closer for a few terrifying seconds until they stopped.

Neville thought he might pass out. All he could hear was the frantic booming of his own heart. Malfoy looked wild, gasping for air as he stared into the dark, a fearsome look of hatred burning in his eyes, curling his mouth. His wand was gripped tightly in his fist, his knuckles white.

All of Neville’s skin felt freezing cold. He didn’t know where to look, and his body felt like it belonged to someone else entirely, trembling madly and drifting away.

“Don’t start up the Army again,” Malfoy said in a sudden whisper. “You don’t know the Carrows like I do. You don’t underst—”

“I already have done.” Neville cleared his rough voice. “And I won’t end it. Not now.”

Malfoy’s mouth twitched, and his nose flared. “Potter isn’t here to save you all now, you know.”

“I know. That’s why I won’t end it.”

To his surprise, Malfoy just nodded.

“What will you—” Neville started, but he stopped when a terrible sound met his ears.

“Little Malfoy!”

It echoed across the stone like a horrible song. Malfoy sucked in a breath and flung out his wand, his eyes peering madly through the dark.

“Come out now, Little Malfoy! We know you’re back . . . your daddy let us know . . .”

The voice was getting closer. Steps thudded louder every second.

Before Neville could think of what to say, Malfoy roughly grabbed his wrist.

“Never do this again,” he hissed. Spit flew from his mouth, and Neville’s bones cracked in his grip. Malfoy shook his arm once as Alecto whistled for him like a dog. “Never watch for me. Never wait for me.”

Neville reached out and clung to Malfoy’s arm, trying to pull him back even as Malfoy sprang up from the alcove, stumbling as he tried to leave.

“Don’t go out there,” Neville pleaded with him. “Let me—”

“Never follow me again,” Malfoy said, leaning down so they were eye to eye. “Wait three minutes, then take the southeast corridor back to your tower as fast as possible. Don’t stop for anything. If you see anyone on patrol, double back and take the passageway behind the tapestry of the Wizengamot session across from the trophy room. The password is ‘fifty-one plums’. Do you know it?”

Malfoy shook his arm hard when Neville didn’t answer, and said again, “Neville, do you know it?” 

Neville nodded dumbly, reeling with shock, then gasped when he saw that Malfoy was blinking away tears, despite the sharp urgency of his voice.

He helplessly gripped Malfoy’s arm even tighter. “Just wait,” he begged. “Let me go first. You don’t have to—”

“ _Please_ ,” Malfoy said. His voice cracked with desperation.

It stopped Neville in his tracks. 

He froze, and his hand slipped from its grip on Malfoy’s robes. Malfoy looked at him for a split-second longer, his eyes shining and wide. Then, just as Amycus’ voice rang out through the darkness with a sneer, so close that Neville thought he could hear the smack of his lips, Malfoy dropped Neville’s arm, pulled up the hood of his cloak, and ran. 

Neville collapsed back into the shadows like a pathetic, weak coward. His hand still awkwardly gripped the air where Malfoy's arm had been. Furious with himself, horrified at how easily he had simply let go, he hugged his knees to his chest, his legs shaking out of his control. He cursed, smacked his head on the stone behind him, then cursed again.

Not five seconds later, Malfoy’s sprinting footsteps faded away into thick silence.

Faded from his help, and from his hands, and from his life. 

(Draco had a bruise from a hand around his neck, and Neville hadn't healed it, hadn't touched it, hadn't kissed it with his lips. Hadn't even _asked_.)

Faded away for good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so grateful for all of you suffering through this with me <3 I know this is a slowww burnnn, but I promise relief is . . . if not soon . . . at least on the horizon. It'll earn the rating eventually (hell, it might even up the rating), I promise!
> 
> I know I'm behind on comments, but my sincerest thanks all the same. They are little bursts of magic that give me the strength to keep me happily writing this story, and I'm very grateful. 
> 
> Next time: Neville finds himself getting help with safely carrying out DA activities from an unexpected (but, actually, totally expected) secret source.


	10. Morsmordre

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay with this update! This fic is my fun side-project, so while I adore it (and have every scene already mapped out), it sometimes has to be put on the back-burner. I'd highly suggest subscribing, if you're into that, so you don't miss any random updates!
> 
> Welcome back, and enjoy :)

The first time Neville saw it, he was on his way back from dinner. 

(Months later, lying in bed with a withered leaf clutched in his hand, he would wonder if that had really been the first time, or just the first time he’d noticed. He would give up his _wand_ to know how many he might have missed. It wasn’t his dad’s wand anyway.)

He hadn’t eaten; as he walked, he felt like a tired, thin shell, just a sack full of bones stumbling blindly through the hall. But everyone else had seemed to enjoy their stew and bread, so it had to count.

Ginny trailed after him, her grip tight on her wand, scanning anxiously as they passed through groups of younger students. Since re-starting the DA, she was ever vigilant that the Carrows should somehow realize that they needed to be immediately eliminated in the middle of a crowded hall, sod the witnesses.

But Neville’s mind was on things far, far away from Death Eaters and wars and student armies. 

He was thinking about Draco’s face at dinner from across the Great Hall.

(Draco. Because it was only Draco now. Could not be anything but Draco. Always.)

Neville remembered how his skin had looked bone-white and thin like a skull. How he hadn’t eaten a single bite. How he’d suddenly stood up, run halfway across the hall, and pulled back a tiny Slytherin boy who was getting into an argument with a Hufflepuff over their respective uncles.

“ _Do you want a bloody detention from me for fighting on school grounds?_ ” Neville had heard Draco hiss in both their faces. Both the boys had cowered back from Draco in terror, and the Slytherin had wrenched himself out of Draco’s grasp with a cry, staring with wide eyes at Draco’s arm.

But Neville had caught Draco’s eyes glancing nervously to the staff table, and he’d seen the same fear which he’d seen weeks ago in a shadowy alcove.

It was all an act. The boys sat down at their respective tables unpunished. The Carrows had no reason to leave their seats. Draco Malfoy was still feared.

Pansy looked at him with longing. Crabbe and Goyle with awe.

(And Neville had wanted to stand up in front of everyone, and go to him, and touch him, and tell him that he was brave. That he was _helping,_ even though nobody else could tell. That he had seen . . .)

And then he saw it.

At first he thought it was a leaf blown inside by the wind. Only, it didn’t flutter to the ground, or swerve through the air caught on a gale.

Frowning, he reached out to grab it, magic crackling across his fingertips the closer he got. He just wanted to touch it. To see if it was real. He just wanted to see . . .

“ _Neville_!” came Ginny’s voice in a fierce whisper. She gripped his wrist and yanked him along. “Don’t dally. Let’s go.”

Neville lurched after her, confused at the frantic tone of her voice, until he caught Snape’s glare on them from the top of the nearest staircase, his black robes crossed over his chest like a swarming, ominous cloud.

“I’m telling you, he knows something,” Ginny was whispering as she dragged Neville behind her. “He knows . . .”

By the time Neville looked back, the plant in the air was gone. 

He blinked, and he thought he saw a familiar wand suddenly disappear behind a column. Thought he saw the smallest flash of pale fingers. 

But he couldn’t be sure.

 

\--

 

The second time Neville noticed the plant cutting floating in mid-air, he was too busy sprinting by with Padma, Dean, and Luna to stop and give it a second thought. 

“Oh, what a beautiful sprig!” Luna cried as they ran. She started to slow down, staring with her mouth half-open at where the flush, full leaves of a fluxweed stem were twirling in a silent dance.

Dean grabbed her wrist and yanked her along. “There’s nothing even there, Luna, _Merlin_ ,” he panted. Sweat was dripping down the back of his neck.

But Neville saw it, too.

He stumbled trying to glance over his shoulder as they neared the next corner, but Padma elbowed him in the ribs to turn back around. “There isn’t any _plant_ , Nev,” she said, sounding exasperated. “Now come _on_.”

Then Neville watched in horror as the leaves suddenly burst into flames, a hex consuming them mid-air in a flash of white fire.

“Stop!” screamed the Slytherin student-guard who was chasing them. He hurled another hex, barely missing Padma’s head. And another, exploding the stone at their feet.

They kept sprinting. 

They’d just hung a new sign advertising DA recruitment near the wall of the library, then stopped to create a bit of harmless but highly inconvenient chaos in two of the hallways near the Carrows’ offices, when the on-patrol students had been tipped off by an infuriating second-year Slytherin who’d spotted them from the floor above when he was wandering out of bed.

Which resulted in the four of them running as fast as they could through Hogwarts at just past six in the morning on a Wednesday, flying around corners as they tried to lose their chasers and make it back to the Room before anyone lost an eyebrow—or worse.

Neville could barely hear the footsteps behind them anymore as they came to the proper corridor, but the four of them kept running until their hands slapped against the wall. Padma was the one to whisper the week’s new password into the stone as they all gasped for breath, waiting until the wall crumbled before them and sucked them inside through the open door before reforming again.

They’d been successful, minus the getting-chased part. 

Each new sign that went up over the last few weeks had resulted in at least a couple new members, and Neville knew that there was strength in numbers, no matter how much the growing size of the DA meetings made him feel panicky and sick to his stomach. The Carrows were becoming wary and suspicious, he knew, and Snape was watching them all like a hawk from where he sat at Dumbledore’s seat at meals every day.

The pranks in the Carrows’ hallway that day were Dean’s idea. Neville wasn’t overly fond of wasting time, risking getting caught just for meaningless chaos instead of an organized plan, but he couldn’t deny the way the members’ faces always lit up at the prospect of a ‘fun’ mission.

Harry would have let them have fun sometimes, Neville thought. So he almost always said yes.

They were all still trying to catch their breath, and Neville was starting to think through how long they’d have to wait before it would be safe to return to their Common Rooms before breakfast, when Luna sighed, and stared back at the wall they’d just tumbled through.

“I wish I could have saved that fluxweed for a vase,” she said, looking wistfully at the stone. “It was an extraordinarily divine example of stem pliancy, it seemed.”

Dean and Padma stared blankly at her, both holding back laughs.

“Luna, are you pulling our leg?” Padma asked.

Dean shook his head. “There wasn’t even anything there.” 

But Neville was suddenly struck with the sensation that he had missed something. Missed something entirely as they sprinted past it in the hall.

“Wonder who floated it there,” he said, almost to himself.

“Good _Christ_ , not you, too,” moaned Dean.

“Oh, who is Christ?” asked Luna with wide eyes. “You think he placed the fluxweed there? What House is he in?” Her voice sounded as if the prospect was awfully romantic.

Neville smiled at her, his real smile, even as his mind tugged at him with unanswered questions, and as Dean and Padma stalked off to one of the sofas, muttering about how they would possibly win against the Death Eaters when their leaders were busy spotting invisible plants.

Neville made a mental note to reach out and grab the plant the next time he saw one—if he saw one again—and hoped that he wouldn’t immediately forget.

 

\--

 

The third time Neville saw a plant floating in midair, he was simply on his way back to class from a trip to the hospital wing. 

Well, not _simply_. He was also trying not to fall down where he stood, or duck in the nearest bathroom to throw up, or cry.

He’d been sitting in Transfiguration earlier that morning, trying not to look as exhausted as he felt, giving McGonagall her due, when his coin had burned in his pocket. The burning hot rhythm of alarm. 

He’d given the excuse of the restroom to hurry off into the hallways, following the pull of the coin pressed into his palm until he came to the doors of the old Defense classroom and froze.

Amycus had his wand pointed straight at a third year’s chest, and the terrified students were all pressed in a line against the wall. Neville had instantly recognized one of them as Michael Corner’s younger sister, and saw that she was squeezing Michael’s coin very hard in her small palm.

Neville had realized that he’d have to have a talk with everyone about keeping their coins safe and not handing them around, but all he had been able to do in the moment was watch in horror as Amycus cleared his throat and began to circle the sobbing boy standing in the center of the room.

Neville couldn’t bring himself to think about the rest, now. It was too nauseating.

The important part was that he’d eventually gotten the poor boy out with a spur-of-the-moment lie involving Professor Flitwick, escaped with only a verbal warning for himself, and ensured the boy was safely back with Madam Pomfrey to be given a calming draught. And all in the time it would have taken a lazy, meandering student to take an extra-long restroom break. Or perhaps, everyone had just assumed that Neville Longbottom had gotten lost.

He was counting it as a win.

And that was when he walked smack into a plant hanging in the air, alone in the middle of the corridor.

His heart stuttered, then sang.

For no reason at all, his skin grew tight with anticipation as he carefully reached up and wrapped his fingers around the stem. The idea that it could be cursed didn’t even occur to him—after all, it had just smacked him in the face, and he wasn’t dying or dead. 

The rest of the DA would probably be horrified to learn that their leader had trusted a random plant hanging in the air—one that he knew was apparently invisible to nearly everyone else—without casting any Detection charms to test it first. But nobody was there to see, and he wouldn’t be talking about this at the next meeting.

He gently held the clipped-off stem in his palm, tracing his thumb over one of the flush, green leaves.

This time, it was asphodel—a single flower bound tight in a fresh bud.

Then, before his eyes, the asphodel disappeared entirely, transfiguring into a tightly rolled up piece of parchment, the same length as the stem had been.

Neville’s heart began to pound. 

With shaking fingers, he clutched the scroll and ducked into the nearest smaller hallway off the main corridor, hiding himself away in the shadows where he wouldn’t be immediately seen. It took him three tries to unroll the parchment, his hands were trembling so badly.

(If only everyone could see him now, he thought. His stupid heart racing over a transfigured _plant_ more than it had been when he’d stared Amycus Carrow in the eye and demand he hand over the boy not ten minutes earlier . . .)

An unfamiliar scrawl stained the middle of the parchment with tight, messy ink:

_East, fourth, three, one._

_North, all, three, ten to eleven._

Neville stared down at the parchment in a mix of confusion and shock. Something niggled in the back of his mind, something hot and insistent, but as he went to read the words a second time to try and make sense of it all, the parchment in his hands suddenly curled back up and shriveled, then fell from his fingers in broken, withered leaves to the stone floor. 

He stared down at his feet, breathing hard for no reason. Briefly, he thought of getting out his coin and summoning someone to come see. Luna had seen it before, hadn’t she? She would have an idea . . .

But for some reason, the thought of someone else witnessing the broken leaves on the floor felt too raw. That someone could witness, firsthand, the complete failure of Neville Longbottom, leader of the DA, who got a note he could barely remember, and couldn’t save it before it crumbled away.

He jumped when he heard the sound of students rushing through the main corridor. Embarrassment consumed him; he’d stood there long enough for class to be over.

Not thinking clearly, Neville bent and quickly brushed as many of the pieces as he could into his hand, then shoved them down in his pocket as he tried to slip back into the main hallway without anyone noticing.

He forced himself to walk in the direction of McGonagall’s office, trying to work through his apology for missing class in his head and failing, his mind still stuck on ghostlike, incomprehensible words like _three_ and _north_ and _east_ and _ten to eleven_.

 

\--

 

The next morning at breakfast, Neville was forcing himself to take tasteless bites of porridge in between idiotically glancing to the empty seat at the very end of the Slytherin table, when Lavender Brown hurled herself onto the bench across from him, tears in her eyes.

“What are you going to _do?_ ” she sobbed under her breath.

Neville froze. A thousand possibilities surged through his mind, until he finally set down his spoon with a shaking hand and tried not to look as useless as he felt.

He cleared his throat as his skin prickled. “About . . . ?”

Lavender gaped at him, then burst into tears all over again. Seamus’ hand appeared out of nowhere on her shoulder, and he pulled her into his chest so she was hidden from the staff table and the rest of the students.

“Why didn’t you come last night?” Seamus said to him in a harsh whisper.

Neville tried not to shrink back at the accusing tone of Seamus’ voice. He swallowed hard. “Come to . . . ?”

“Bloody hell, Neville,” Seamus groaned. He glared at Neville with fire in his eyes. “We summoned you. Did you not see your coin? We were in the Room all night trying to help Cho. We needed you there.”

Neville’s mind reeled. “Cho?”

Seamus growled in frustration. “Call yourself a bloody leader,” he hissed under his breath, looking down at the table. Then he stared at Neville as he helped Lavender to her feet, leading her out of the hall. “Just talk to Luna to find out what you bloody missed,” he said, almost spat, and then the two of them were gone, Lavender’s stifled sobs echoing across the hall. 

Out of nowhere, Luna was suddenly at his side, her long hair falling into Neville’s barely-eaten porridge.

“Yes, I knew he would be particularly angry,” Luna said, as casually as if she were announcing the day of the week.

Neville tried to speak normally over his pounding heart. His palms felt slick and cold. “What was he on about?”

Luna looked completely unphased. “Everyone on duty last night went on their assigned missions. Only, Cho did not return on time with Anthony. We were all very worried, imagining both of them dead.”

If it had been any other circumstance, Neville would have laughed. Only his stomach was in his throat as he desperately searched the Ravenclaw table for Cho’s face . . .

“She is not dead,” Luna added, about five seconds too late. “Only, she and Anthony met with a coordinated sabotage from the Slytherin students, it seems. It turns out, rather like the spy novel ‘To Catch a Slashkilter’, they have been tracking our movements and coming up with targeted attacks. Anthony put up a shield, but Cho’s hair was badly singed. They made it back to the Room around three in the morning, and we were all trying to heal their great emotional distress until just before breakfast. Everyone is quite terrified of being murdered, now. Nobody would listen to my suggestion that we all sing an old Kelp Kingdom hymn together to heal, but maybe next time they’ll learn. And perhaps we should stay away from the East Wing for a few—”

“Did you say the East Wing?” Neville gasped. 

It was the first time he’d been able to make his voice work since Luna casually alerted him to the fact that Cho Chang was not, in fact, dead.

Luna gave him an odd look. “Neville, I know you are expected to forget things, on basis of popular opinion, but I just said the East Wing. I know you aren’t that—”

“What floor were they on?”

Luna put a delicate hand on his arm. “Neville, why didn’t you answer your coin last night?”

“Luna, _what floor?_ ”

Neville’s heart was pounding so hard it hurt. It felt like the floor was tilting onto its side, and he was about to slide off the earth any second unless he held fast to the table.

Luna frowned, and the motion looked unnatural on her face. “Why, the fourth floor, of course. Only, I think we should stay away from the entire East—”

“Did Cho or Anthony say how many students were involved in the attack?” He was gripping the table so tightly his knuckles were white. “Was it three?”

And then, unbidden, Neville’s eyes flew to the end of the Slytherin bench. 

He gasped when he saw that, not only was the empty spot filled by a shock of white hair and black robes, but that two grey eyes were staring straight back at him across the hall.

A pulse jumped through Neville’s chest, halting his lungs.

He’d dreamt of those eyes.

Three weeks since that night in the alcove in the Slytherin dungeons, the one he’d nearly convinced himself had been a terrible dream, where a nose had brushed against his, and tapping fingers had curled into his robes, and a voice had breathed, “ _Longbottom,_ ” as the air crackled, and Neville’s stomach pulled tight . . . 

And Neville hadn’t answered his coin the night before because he’d been hiding up at the top of the Astronomy Tower in the dark, not even caring if he got caught or by whom, desperately thinking over what the words from the scroll had meant. Trying to find some meaning in the useless letters, as if _that_ could somehow help Harry Potter defeat the Dark Lord and live.

And then he’d closed his eyes, and despite his best efforts to think about meetings and schoolwork and guards, his mind had drifted to the sharp smell of fresh mint in the dark. Draco’s low voice next to his ear. The sound of his tongue as he swallowed. Their knees pressed together. And Neville had thought of him miles below in the cold dungeons and missed him. 

Merlin, he’d _missed_ him, sitting alone at the top of the Tower with his coin left back in his room . . .

“Neville.”

Luna’s voice ripped through his thoughts, parting the fog. He blinked, and he saw that the seat at the end of the Slytherin bench was once again empty, but when he turned to look at Luna, he realized in a wave of cold panic that she had seen.

“Neville,” she said again, very slowly forming the word. She pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Did you _know_ that there would be three Slytherin guards in the East Wing? On the fourth floor?”

(“ _Don’t start up the Army again_ ,” Draco had begged him with wet eyes, and a fresh bruise on his neck, and fingers tapping on his thigh. “ _Potter isn’t here to save you all now_.”)

Neville looked at Luna, the girl who’d once spoken to him of stars and constellations on a warm summer’s day in the grass lifetimes ago, and he placed a clammy palm on her knee beneath the table.

“I . . .” He glanced once more to the empty seat, hoping she would understand. “I might have,” he finally said, whispering so softly she had to lean forward to hear.

She nodded very seriously, and covered his hand with her own. “I think you should let me know if you think you might know something again,” she whispered. “Everyone in the Army is very scared.”

He swallowed hard, and fought back a shiver at the memory of Seamus’ voice, and Lavender’s tears. “I will.”

“And I would like it if you kept your coin with you from now on,” she added softly.

Neville could feel his cheeks heating, but he forced himself to keep meeting her gaze. He tried to think of what brave, grand promise Harry would make, but his brain could only think of Harry’s empty bed with the folded sheets, and he came up short.

“I understand,” he finally said. He shrugged. “I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

She squeezed his fingers, then glanced toward the Slytherin table. Her eyes suddenly looked very full, and very sad.

“Oh, Neville,” she said. “I’m sorry, too.”

 

\--

 

The notes kept coming.

Weeks passed, and Neville almost came to be able to predict the floating plants like clockwork. Every time, they floated in mid-air, waiting for him to walk by. Every time, the stem transformed into parchment in his hands, and a thin scrawl would tell him cryptic words about locations and people and times. 

Every time, after only a few precious seconds, it would dissolve into pieces. And Neville would stoop wherever he’d been hiding to read the note in secret, and pick up the withered, dead leaves with his fingers, and keep them in his robe pocket for no reason at all.

Sometimes, he missed them. 

If he changed his routine, or had to walk a different route, he could go days without a message. Without the familiar scrawl cradled in his palm. Those days, the DA would conduct their activities only within the Room.

“ _Recoup days_ ,” Neville called them, “ _No missions tonight_.” And everyone would grin at him, trusting his words, then break off into smaller groups to practice and plan and train. To share homework answers by the fire. To laugh at Justin Finch-Fletchley eating an earthworm-flavored bean.

Once, and only once, Neville held the paper to his lips, right in the desperate moments before it crumbled away. Trying and failing to catch a whiff of _something_. To understand. 

But the parchment had smelled of nothing but his own ink-stained hands.

By November, the members of the DA seemed to think that Neville had finally stepped into his role as their brilliant leader. They were owning the castle, succeeding in nearly every mission. They were conducting their activities without running into a single teacher or student-guard. They were growing, and they were resisting, and trying to get messages to the outside world. Trying to contact the Order about their work, and about what miniscule pieces of information they had gradually came to know from within the Hogwarts walls.

The Room of Requirement transformed into a safe place for all hours, beyond meetings. It was a hiding place, and a War Room; an infirmary, and a place to sleep. It was a place to cry together when the stifling terror of the castle became too much. When someone had been forced to watch students cast the _cruciatus_ on each other one too many times. When someone had been hexed and was moaning in pain, or lost communication with their family beyond the gates. 

It was a place to whisper: fresh rumors about Death Eater movements beyond the castle from eavesdropping on the Carrows; intel on the Order passed in secret from Luna’s father through the _Quibbler’s_ pages; angry, hissing rants about the Slytherin students, about which of them had Death Eater families, about who might want Harry dead. 

About the most dangerous one of them all, the one who was guilty and Dark and _Marked_ : Malfoy.

(“ _I would keep them all,_ ” Draco had said to him after asking about his mum without laughing. After he’d let Neville gently press his rough fingers to his bruised throat. “ _I would never let them be taken . . ._ ”)

And the Room was a place to crowd around the Wizard Wireless in the middle of the night, holding their breaths and twisting the dial through endless static, hoping and _hoping_ to catch Lee Jordan’s voice through the fog. To catch a hint of Harry’s name . . . or someone they knew . . .

In all those weeks, Neville was never, ever without his coin.

He talked to Harry, sometimes, despite the fact that Harry was lost and possibly dead.

When he found himself on those rare occasions completely alone in his dormitory room, Neville would walk on trembling legs across the vast expanse of the carpet, and sit down on Harry’s pristine bed, and touch the cold blankets with his hand. 

He would tell him about the meetings. What they all remembered from Harry’s lessons in fifth year. He would tell him about Ginny and Luna and Cho. He would tell him what it was like to be terrified of the very halls they had all once called home. To fear pain around every corner. The unfathomable darkness of the Great Hall ceiling, as if it didn’t have enough hope left to reflect the daylit sky.

He told Harry how the notes from transfigured plants had never once been wrong.

Neville followed the notes religiously, sprinting back to the Room as soon as he could whenever he got one so he could devise that night’s plan of attack before he forgot the words: where to put up new signs for recruitment, which hallways to use to check on DA members and their siblings in their various Houses, which areas of the castle to avoid, who to tail with spies. 

And at night, only at night, he would lie awake with the withered leaves clutched in his fingers. As if they could tell him all their secrets if only he cradled them long enough in his hands. If only he begged them, feeling lonely and young in the dark, to tell him who had floated them into the air. Whose hand had held the quill . . .

Luna never asked him again how he suddenly became adept at guessing where patrolling guards would be in the castle. She’d given him a penetrating look after the first three chase-less missions had gone by in a row, and then given him a tiny smile, and never mentioned it again.

Which Neville was grateful for, because if she _had_ asked, he would have genuinely, honestly looked at her and said, “I don’t know how. I don’t know who it is. They don’t want me to know.”

But Neville knew who he wanted it to be. Desperately. More than he wanted to breathe.

Almost as much as Neville wanted it _not_ to be him. 

Because Neville lost sleep at night wondering what would happen to Draco if he was found out. Spent hours of his life wondering whether Draco had spent the night in the castle or back at the manor. If Draco’s skin had fresh bruises hidden beneath his robes. If his arm hurt. If Snape was there to hold up his chin.

If Draco called him “Neville” in his head since that night, or whether he was still Longbottom like before. If anything had changed in their final moments together, as tears glistened in Draco’s eyes, and he pulled his hood back over his head.

Twice, Neville found himself wandering toward the dungeons at odd hours. Twice, he caught himself just around the corner from the Slytherin Common Room. “ _Where is he?_ ” he would beg if he knocked. “ _Is he safe? Has he slept? Is he warm?_ ”

But Neville always forced himself to turn around and head back up the stairs, his fingertips playing with the leaves in his robe pocket until he was back in friendly DA territory once more.

 

\--

 

The first week of December, Neville found himself back in the rare situation of being chased through the Hogwarts Halls.

It was nearing sundown, and his too-thin, angular body felt like it was hurling itself across the stone unnaturally, as if yanked by strings. His chest ached, and his vision felt hazy, and all he could hear was the terrible drumming of his own feet, nearly drowned out by the two pairs of feet chasing behind him.

It was the Carrows, he was fairly certain. He hadn’t gotten a great look after the first curse zoomed past. But he’d felt their eyes on him all week as he tried to do normal things like go to class and eat and sleep, and Ginny had begged him to be on his guard.

_How_ the Carrows had known that he was planning to steal extra medical supplies from Pomfrey’s supply cabinet that night was a mystery, but he couldn’t afford to stop and think about it when his life depended on him making it around each new corner just before they turned the previous one.

A hex exploded just over his head, crumbling a block of stone.

(Neville was almost bored of hexes flying toward his head by now. Bored of running. Bored of slinking through the dark. Bored of the terror.)

And that was when he turned a corner, took two steps, and ran smack into Draco Malfoy.

Neville knew it was him before they’d even hit the ground. He collapsed in a beautiful rush of black silk and mint, right on top of a warm body with a harsh grunt, amd Draco’s arms flew up around Neville’s back, trying to stop the fall. The air from Draco’s lungs released in Neville’s face with a strong oomph. 

“Draco,” Neville panted. 

He reached with trembling fingers for Draco’s face, for his hair, for his clothes, for _something_ , but Draco was somehow already on his feet, gripping Neville by the shoulders and yanking him to standing with a shocking burst of strength.

“Go left,” Draco hissed, whipping out his wand and widening his stance, eyes trained on the end of the hall.

It was the first words Draco had said to him in nearly two months. They landed like water in the back of Neville’s throat, and he almost moaned. 

The footsteps were just at the end of the corridor, but Neville couldn’t move away.

He wildly gripped handfuls of Draco’s black suit, shivering at the feel of it once more in his palms. He pulled him closer, until their panting chests touched. For one beautiful second, Draco’s cold hands covered Neville’s own.

“Is it you?” Neville gasped, panic making his lungs spasm.

Draco wrenched Neville’s hands off him and took a step back. “ _Go_.”

“The notes, the information, has it been you?” Neville pleaded.

“Ooh, I think someone’s stopped to catch their breath!” came a sickening voice, just out of view.

Before Neville could beg him again, Draco’s wand was suddenly in his face. 

“I’ll fucking hex you,” Draco said in a desperate, shaking voice. “I said _go left._ ”

The shadow of someone appeared at the edge of Neville’s vision, sprawling across the floor from around the corner; he had no choice. 

With one last desperate look at Draco’s pale eyelashes, the freckle on his jaw, the long hair falling into his face, the dip of his upper lip . . . Neville clutched a handful of Draco’s suit right over his chest and breathed, “ _Thank you._ ” 

Then he sprinted with all his might down the corridor to his left, his last vision of Draco’s wrecked expression burned into his mind.

Distantly, as he ran, and his palms burned where he’d gripped handfuls of silk, he heard Draco’s voice back in the hallway, clear as day and perfectly calm, as if he’d simply been out for an evening stroll.

“Ah, Alecto, Amycus,” he said, in his most elegant drawl. “Fancy seeing you both here tonight. I believe the man you’re looking for just ran to the right. It’s a shame I couldn’t stop him myself, but he was so quick . . .”

Neville didn’t realize until he made it back to the Room in one piece, and Ginny looked up at him in terrified concern, that he had tear tracks running down his cheeks, dripping salt into his mouth.

He let her put her arm around him on the sofa for a very long time. She never asked him what had happened, and he held his face in his hands, closing his eyes.

 

\--

 

The day before Winter Holidays were due to begin, Neville found himself wandering aimlessly through the halls in the middle of the afternoon. 

He was supposed to be in class, he didn’t remember which one, but instead, he found himself taking step after step across the stone, passing by the familiar corridors that used to lead him to the greenhouses, warmed by the sun in a previous life.

Snow flurries drifted in through the walkways now, swirling down endlessly from a weeping, grey sky. 

It seemed impossible that Christmas would still be happening in only a week. He half-expected the Hogwarts gates to remain shut tomorrow afternoon, holding them all in a prison, never to see their families again. He imagined his Gran, sitting alone in her vast drawing room on Christmas morning, her only son babbling at a plain white wall miles away, and her only grandchild stuck in the Room of Requirement until he was nothing but bones and a skull.

His cheek hurt.

Two hours ago, Neville had stood up in the middle of Muggle Studies, sick to his stomach listening to Alecto ramble on and on and on, and he hadn’t even believed the words coming from his own mouth as he asked her, point blank, how much Muggle blood she had in her veins.

He’d thought the moment would make him feel like Harry Potter again—brave and fearless and fighting in the face of Darkness with pure Light.

But instead, as Alecto’s wand had gashed a curse across his face, and as blood had sprayed from his cheek over his robes and the desk, all Neville had thought was that he was completely exhausted. 

Some of his classmates had screamed in horror, and some of them had cheered. They’d praised Neville for his fight, for Dumbledore’s Army, pledging their allegiance with their wands held high in Alecto’s face.

Neville had tried to keep his chest puffed out as he ran from the classroom, waving off anyone’s help and claiming he was on his way to Pomfrey. He’d held steady for about ten buzzing steps, shuddering at the howl of Alecto’s screams of rage echoing over his friends’ jeers. Then he’d turned the corner out of sight and sunk to his knees, out of his mind with searing pain.

He’d never felt anything like it—not since Bellatrix Lestrange had held a wand firing curses straight into his chest. The world faded in and out, and hot blood coated his tongue.

And then, for reasons he’d never be able to explain, he took hallway after hallway leading _away_ from the hospital wing. Dried blood coated the front of his robes and sweater, and the gash across his face had clotted into a throbbing, stinging mess. 

And still, he walked. Not caring if anyone chased after him to finish him off, or if anyone caught sight of him and screamed.

As he walked, he considered his life as if from afar. How lately, he’d found himself staring from the corner in the Room of Requirement—at his friends looking breathless and strong, holding each other up, laughing in the face of despair, toasting to Harry Potter. 

He’d been watching them all slowly pair off as the weeks went by. Couples straying closer together on couches for comfort. Girls’ legs draped across boys’ laps, and hands on thighs. Gentle touches on faces, and fingers stroking hair, and secret kisses in corners where people thought no one could see . . .

And Neville would be alone, hunched over a plan with a parchment and quill. 

And he was exhausted. 

He’d never felt _less_ like he was in the middle of a war. People were dying beyond the walls, pledging allegiance to a madman, running from Snatchers, fighting for their lives for the good of the Order. 

And here was Neville. Dripping blood from a cut on his face because he said something unwittingly stupid in class. 

Briefly, he thought of going near Ravenclaw tower and waiting for Luna to return. Surely, she’d heard of what had happened to him by now. He was even surprised, almost pathetically offended, that no members of the DA had come running looking for him now that he’d missed the next class and wasn’t in the infirmary.

Then he _did_ hear footsteps. Sprinting footsteps. And a person came flying around the corner into the open space at the end of the hall.

It was Draco Malfoy.

Neville watched in shock as Draco came sliding to a halt. He glanced wildly around the branching hallways as if he was searching for something lost. Then he whipped around and made to sprint again in a different direction. 

And that’s when he noticed Neville.

Draco stopped himself so quickly he nearly fell onto his face. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. He lifted his hands. “Where the _fuck_ have you been?”

Neville froze, stunned.

Draco’s hair was disheveled and dripping with sweat, his face pale and gleaming, thin cheeks flushed. And he was panting, as if he’d just run the full length of the castle more than once.

Draco stared back at Neville, his eyes quickly scanning Neville’s body in a way that made Neville feel suddenly naked, his skin prickling and hot.

Then Draco’s face paled, even more than Neville thought possible. He looked in horror at Neville’s cheek, his grey eyes wide with shock. His mouth dropped open.

For one terrifying second, Neville almost thought Draco would keel over. Then Draco shook his head and marched toward him, reaching out for Neville’s arm.

“What happened?” Draco said, his voice almost unrecognizably wild. He shook Neville’s arm so hard it hurt in the socket. “Why aren’t you in the infirmary? What happened to your face? What are you doing _here_?”

Neville swallowed, trying to form words at the shock of being so _close_ to him. Hearing his voice.

“I’m just . . . it’s nothing . . . I was going to—were you looking for me?”

“It’s all over the bloody school,” Draco said, his face now seething with rage. His nostrils flared. “I heard that you—and no one knew where—nevermind.”

He looked at Neville with a cold expression, almost like disgust, then checked they were alone before dragging Neville along, his fingers clamped tight on Neville’s wrist. “Come here.”

Neville followed, dumbly, his feet barely touching the ground. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”

Draco glared at him over his shoulder. “Shut up and come on,” he hissed.

Neville suddenly felt too bone-weary to argue. He let Draco drag him through the school, watching idly as Draco stopped to check each new empty hallway before they turned a corner, one hand gripping his wand and the other yanking Neville along.

They went down and down and down. Neville didn’t even recognize the dungeon corridors that they crept through after a while.

Draco’s breathing was heavy, echoing on the stone walls as they went. His grip was so tight on Neville’s wrist that Neville’s hand went numb.

“ _How have you been?_ ” he idiotically wanted to ask, as if they weren’t in the middle of a war taking place in their school. As if Neville’s face wasn’t covered in blood, and Draco didn’t look like he’d just spent an hour sprinting through the castle, looking for _him_.

Distantly, his mind registered the fact that any sane member of Dumbledore’s Army would be afraid at being forcibly lead to the dungeons by someone with the Mark. 

But in the same breath, Neville also knew that he would never feel that fear. He could wait a thousand years, one-hundred thousand, and it would never come.

Draco lead them until they entered a dungeon passageway that seemed even more cloaked in shadow than the rest, falling into disrepair. Even the lamps flickered ominously along the damp walls, and icy water dripped from the stone.

Neville stumbled for balance when Draco finally let go of his wrist in front of a blank stretch of wall. He noticed, as if through a dream, that the fingers of Draco’s left hand were tapping madly against his thigh through his robes.

He subtly pinched his own arm just to check that he was awake.

Before Neville could decide whether to ask where they were, Draco took a deep breath and gave him an odd look. If Neville didn’t know any better, he would have thought that the look was shame.

“I have to . . .” Draco began, still trying to catch his breath. Sweat dripped down his brow in small, pearled beads. His grey eyes seemed pinned to Neville’s cheek, unable to look away or meet his gaze. 

“I have to show this, to open the door,” he said.

Neville frowned, then realized with a dull thud in his stomach that Draco was holding up his left arm between them, still covered by the sleeve of his robes. 

The moment seemed to freeze. 

They both stared down at Draco’s arm in the shadows, and Neville saw that it was shaking until Draco held it steady with his other hand.

A boldness rushed through him—sharper and more powerful than whatever had filled him when he rose to his feet in Alecto’s classroom. 

Neville raised a shockingly steady hand, dried blood on his fingers, and he placed it over Draco’s forearm on top of his robes. The heat of Draco’s skin seemed to burn straight through to his palm.

“Okay,” Neville said, his voice almost too loud in the darkness.

They both stared down at Neville’s hand draped across Draco’s arm. Just once, Neville let his thumb softly rub along the fabric.

Draco inhaled sharply through his nose.

When Neville looked up, Draco was blinking hard. He pulled his arm from Neville’s grasp, so that Neville’s fingers fell away one by one. Then Draco angled his body away, pulled up his sleeve, and held his wand to the black snake with bone-thin fingers.

Neville held his breath.

Draco glanced at him one more time with heavy eyes through the darkness, almost as if he looked sorry, then he took a long breath and stared down at the pale stretch of his skin.

“ _Morsmordre,_ ” Draco whispered. 

The word sent a horrible, icy shiver up Neville’s spine. He watched in horror as the snake twisted sickly on Draco’s skin, flickered once with a silvery burst of light, then went still.

Before Neville’s very eyes, a door suddenly shimmered into existence in the black stone, carved into the belly of the earth from magic. Draco stared at Neville as he reached for the handle, then paused.

“Are you going to follow me in?” Draco asked, frowning as he said it. He flicked his sleeve back down at his side.

Neville didn’t even need to pause to consider. “Yes.”

For some reason, that seemed to be what Draco needed to hear. He nodded once, straightened up, and pushed open the door, pointing his wand to ignite the oil lamp on the wall as they entered.

Neville ducked to follow behind him. He looked around in awe at what appeared to be a pristine storeroom, filled floor to ceiling with thousands of jars of ingredients, shimmering ghostlike in the pools of light from the rusted lamp.

He heard the door click shut behind him, then felt a powerful wave of magic roll through the room as the wall of stone settled back into place.

Silence fell like a thick curtain.

Neville couldn’t believe that he was alone with Draco Malfoy again. It felt like only seconds had passed since they were pressed together in the darkened corner, nearly check to cheek, Draco’s hair brushing his face.

For a moment, they just breathed, not quite looking at each other. Neville wondered if anything had ever sounded so beautiful as the soft, rasping sound.

Draco wordlessly pointed his wand at the chair by the wooden table in the center of the tiny room, effortlessly transfiguring it into a bench wide enough for two.

After a sharp nod from Draco, Neville sat. He felt bone-tired and heavy, barely able to keep his eyes open through the grey gloom. He stared at Draco’s back as Draco almost frantically scanned the shelves, long, pale fingers reaching out to trace the various jars.

“What were you thinking?” Draco said into the silence, not looking at him.

Before Neville could respond, he went on in an angry rush. “You don’t even have to tell me who gave that to you. I recognize the spell; it’s one of Alecto’s favorites. Have you _any_ idea how stupid you’ve been? How mad you’re being? Weeks, months, you’ve been egging them on. You and all your stupid little friends. Do you want them to die for you? For this ridiculous, meaningless cause?”

Draco snatched up a jar with his hand, nearly dropping it to the floor, and Neville could only stare at him blankly from where he sat, his tongue in knots.

Draco whipped around in a swirl of robes and pinned Neville with his gaze. “You think your pathetic games of chase and your useless pranks are all fun and harmless? Your little missions in the dark to put up your blasted army signs?” He slammed the jar down onto the table, making Neville flinch at the noise. “ _Fuck_ , Neville, you know what they are capable of,” he nearly yelled. “You’ve seen . . . you saw them that day in the courtyard. With me. How long until they pin you as the ringleader, if they haven’t already? How long until you can’t weasel your way out of their detentions? Until they torture you without reason? Until you wind up _dead_ , and then what are the rest of them going to do? How long would they all survive—?”

“You would keep helping them,” Neville suddenly cut in, rising to his feet in a wave of emotion. His eyes burned as he reached out and trapped Draco’s left arm in his grip once more. “I don’t think any of this is fun. I don’t think it’s a game. Harry . . . Harry could be _dead_ , and we’re all trapped in here, and this is all I have.”

“I told you to keep quiet,” Draco growled, so close that his spit flew into Neville’s face. “Everything I’ve done, to get you to fucking stay out of it, and then you’re holding your stupid meetings, running down the halls. Why can’t you—”

“Kids are being hurt!” Neville screamed. He slammed his palm on the table. “They’re _kids_. They don’t have any reason to be mixed up in this mess. Don’t tell me you don’t see that. If we don’t do something, if I don’t try—”

But Neville’s words died in his mouth as a wave of blinding pain suddenly ripped across his cheek. He’d torn open the clotted wound again as he spoke, and hot streams of blood were pouring down his skin, soaking his stained robes.

He clutched his hand to his face and tried not to scream. Distantly, he realized that hands were on his shoulders, pushing him down to sit. Fingers were pulling his hand away from his cheek, holding his neck steady.

Soft words were pouring into his ear, comforting and warm. Neville clung to them.

“You’re alright, it’s alright,” a voice was murmuring. Neville blindly grabbed hold of a fistful of robes as he gritted his teeth at the pain.

Fingers—Draco’s fingers—were pushing the blood-stained hair out of his face.

“Hold still,” Draco whispered. “Listen to me, you’re alright.”

Neville squeezed his eyes shut harder.

Then, like a breath of fresh air over his skin, familiar magic tingled across his face in a soothing rush. Neville shivered as the magic he’d longed for in the middle of the darkest nights stopped the wet blood from dripping down his cheek, and dulled the mind-numbing pain into a manageable ache.

Draco murmured a spell Neville didn’t recognize, and he winced once as he felt the skin of his face knitting itself together, as if the magic was a needle and string.

When the sensation stopped, and Neville finally brought himself to open his eyes, Draco was sitting impossibly close, his eyes trained on Neville’s cheek.

“You’re alright,” Draco said again, almost to himself under his breath. Neville recognized the soft magic of a cleansing charm working its way over his skin, clearing away the blood.

For long minutes, Neville sat there and tried to regain his breath. His vision was still blurred from the shock of the pain, and his heart felt numb. Distantly, he realized that the robes clutched in his hand weren’t his own, but he couldn’t let go. 

Draco didn’t say anything. He kept one warm hand on the back of Neville’s clammy neck, the tips of his fingers barely touching Neville’s hair.

“Where are we?” Neville finally asked, as if Draco hadn’t just watched him come apart at the seams. 

“Snape’s private storeroom,” Draco said, sounding a bit out of breath, but calm.

Neville nodded, then paled as a terrifying realization slammed into his chest. “That spell, though. The one you did to get in . . . the Carrows could—”

Draco shook his head. His palm on the back of Neville’s neck slowly slipped away. “Snape set that as the entrance so that only I could get in, other than him. Not any other students. He . . . he didn’t trust the wards of the castle.” 

Neville blinked, feeling like he was coming out of a deep sleep, and cleared his rough throat. “But they could still—”

“The Carrows don’t know this room exists,” Draco said. “Technically, they could enter if they knew, but . . .” He shrugged, then he unscrewed the lid of the jar he’d slammed onto the table, carefully taking out what Neville recognized were preserved dittany leaves. 

Draco swallowed. “I haven’t let them know about it, though. Whenever they’ve looked into my head. Neither has Severus.”

Neville wanted to drink in the sound of Draco’s voice in the quiet room. Have it inked under his skin. Poured into his blood.

“I trust you,” Neville said.

Draco shook his head, his eyes glowing in the golden, shadowy light from the lamp. “You really shouldn’t,” he said, but his voice sounded unsure.

To stop himself from doing something unthinkable, like reach out and pull Draco into his arms, or press his cheek to the crook of Draco’s neck, Neville kept talking.

“Snape knows you come in here, then?”

Draco looked at his hands as he prepared some dittany leaves, then at Neville’s cheek, leaning closer to inspect the sealed gash.

“You’re all hogging the bloody Room of Requirement,” he said. “The rest of us need somewhere to go that’s safe. The other Slytherins have their Common Room. There isn’t anywhere else.”

Something sharp twisted in Neville’s chest, but he couldn’t pinpoint what.

“This is where you are, then?” Neville asked in a whisper, as if they could be overheard any moment. “When I don’t see you? When you’re not at the manor?”

He heard Draco’s swallow as Draco pressed a palmful of cool dittany to Neville’s cheek, tilting Neville’s head back gently with his other hand. 

“When you don’t see me?” Draco repeated, his voice oddly fragile.

Neville closed his eyes at the slight burn of the dittany working its way into his slashed skin. “Yes. When I don’t see you.”

Their faces were incredibly close. Neville could feel the warm stream of air as Draco breathed. The gentle hand holding Neville’s head wove fingers through his hair.

“I told you not to watch for me,” Draco whispered.

Neville opened his eyes, immediately locking with pale grey just inches from his. “I know.”

But then he had to close his eyes again. It was unbearable. To think of Draco sitting alone in the black shadows of the storeroom, perched on the tiny chair with the dim light coming from the horrible lamp.

And meanwhile, Neville had been spending some nights laughing with the other DA members on comfortable sofas. Drinking smuggled pumpkin juice together by the fire. Cheering over successful missions. Watching people curl around each other in comfort.

And only an hour ago, Neville had been thinking how _exhausted_ he was by it. And Draco had apparently spent half his term sitting alone in the dark . . .

“This was unforgivably stupid, you know,” said Draco’s voice, as if from far away. 

Neville opened his eyes, words on his lips. Then he froze at the sensation of Draco’s palm covering his cheek, cupping his jaw.

He only had to lean forward. 

Only had to tilt his head and open his lips and be thrown headfirst into his dreams. Full pale lips pressed warmly against his own, drinking in his air, letting his taste coat his tongue . . .

Draco suddenly hissed, as if in pain. His arm holding Neville’s head whipped away.

Neville bolt upright, his heart pounding. Terror bloomed in his chest that Draco had somehow read his thoughts. That he had known. That he had looked into the depths of Neville’s twisted mind and saw their mouths pressed together, bare skin on skin, and flinched away in disgust at the thought, in fear—

But then he realized that Draco was shaking, struggling to breathe.

(Remembered the alcove. Draco’s nose pressed along his own. And he hadn’t looked disgusted, then. Hadn’t looked afraid . . .)

“Are you hurt?” Neville gasped, a horrible realization washing over him at the look on Draco’s face. “Tell me. Where are you hurt?”

But Draco shook his head, and it was as if a blank mask had fallen across his features. He suddenly appeared as if he was simply sitting in class, even though his body looked rigid, and he held his arms tightly down at his sides. 

“I’m not hurt,” he said, his voice flat. “It’s nothing.”

Neville stared at him, taking in the fresh sheen of sweat over Draco’s brow, but then Draco was stiffly picking up another handful of dittany, carefully crushing it in his shaking palms.

“You need another round of this, else it’ll scar,” Draco said.

Neville nodded, lost for words, and Draco lifted the cool leaves to Neville’s cheek again with one hand, his other arm pressed against his stomach.

Stupidly, Neville asked the very next question that popped into his mind to break the tense silence:

“How did you know the countercurse for this? You knew how to heal it.”

Draco’s hand holding the dittany flinched once, then regained control, pressing the leaves to Neville’s skin.

Neville closed his eyes, for some reason unable to keep looking at the unnaturally tense lines of Draco’s body.

“Last year,” Draco said in a very small voice. It tickled Neville’s ear. “My . . . my mother . . . after I failed to . . .” Draco trailed off, and was quiet for so long that Neville thought he wouldn’t finish. Without thinking, Neville moved his hand back to Draco’s robes and held on again.

Draco’s thumb seemed to stroke his cheek.

“My mother was punished,” Draco finally said, in the deepest whisper. “Alecto got to carry it out. I learned, then.”

A wet burning filled Neville’s eyes. He tried to turn his face to look at him as he sucked in a breath.

“Draco . . .”

But Draco pressed the leaves more firmly into his cheek and looked away. “Please, don’t,” he said. 

Then, so quickly it took Neville a few moments to catch up, Draco added, “Why didn’t you go straight to Pomfrey?”

Draco’s hand fell away as Neville went silent. Neville opened and closed his mouth, testing his jaw, and his cheek felt smooth and clean. Pain free.

Silently, he shifted so he was facing Draco on the bench. Flickering shadows were dancing across Draco’s thin cheeks, playing tricks with the grey light of his eyes, casting shadows from his eyelashes across his skin.

They stared at each other. Neville licked his lips to speak. Saw Draco’s eyes dart down once to his tongue.

“I don’t know,” he whispered.

Draco frowned. “I don’t believe you. I don’t think—” 

But he suddenly moaned under his breath, and his face broke; his eyes squeezed shut in pain. He hunched over with his arms crossed over his stomach, his hair falling into his white face.

“You _are_ hurt,” Neville said. He reached out for him, but Draco waved his hand away. “Don’t lie to me. Draco, please. Tell me—”

“Shut up,” Draco hissed weakly. He seemed to gasp for a deep breath. 

It made Neville want to scream, but he clamped shut his jaw and bit his tongue.

Then, straightening up again, his face sweaty and pale, Draco stared at the wall just over Neville’s shoulder. His eyes looked glossy in the flickering light, and he set his shoulders, seeming to pull himself together once more.

“Why didn’t you go straight to the infirmary?” he finally asked again, sounding exhausted.

But something came over Neville at the sight of the grey circles under Draco’s eyes.

“Why did you do it?” he asked back, the words rushing from his lips. He leaned forward. “The notes. I know it was you. Why did you help me? Help all of us?”

Neville’s body felt like it was alive for the first time in three months. Like his veins hadn’t been pumping real blood until just this moment. He could feel every prickle of Draco’s heat in the air. Every shivering exhale against his skin.

Draco didn’t look like he was in pain anymore. 

Instead, he looked lost. He looked five years younger than the man in the suit strutting through the Hogwarts halls at the beginning of term.

The air thrummed, like wordless, wandless magic. It was the alcove all over again, and Neville wanted to weep at the sweet, aching memory as it washed over his skin.

Draco’s eyes looked like stars lighting up the blackest sky. He blinked, many times, and Neville felt his heart drop into his stomach.

(This was what people wrote about in poems, he suddenly realized. This was what they sang about. What they killed for. What they’d rather die than live without . . .)

“Sometimes . . .” Draco began, hesitantly into the thick silence, but his voice shook. He stopped and looked down to where their knees were nearly touching on the bench.

“Draco,” Neville breathed.

Draco looked up at him again with wide eyes and swallowed. Neville gave the tiniest nod.

“Sometimes,” Draco started again, breathing hard. “I . . . I want things. I _feel_ things.” His voice faded to a shaking whisper. “And I don’t understand.”

Neville felt the earth drop out from beneath him. He couldn’t breathe if he tried.

(He might have realized that Draco’s left hand was clenched tightly into a fist. Might have noticed that he was still shaking, the veins of his neck pulsing as if he was in terrible pain, but Neville couldn’t focus. Not now. Not ever again.)

Neville leaned even closer, until he could count the individual flecks of blue in Draco’s eyes.

“What sort of things?” Neville breathed.

Draco looked back down to their knees. Slowly, carefully, as if Neville might leap up and sprint away, Draco lifted his right hand, and he reached to where Neville was still softly gripping his robes.

Neville watched, dumbstruck. Thin pale fingers edged closer and closer to his own rough hand. He watched as Draco tentatively touched his skin, tracing Neville’s knuckles with his fingertips . . .

Then Draco winced, and he pulled back.

“No,” Neville gasped. He blindly grabbed Draco’s fingers with his own, keeping him close. 

Slowly, painfully, as if Draco might disappear at his touch, he moved his hand until he was covering Draco’s with his own, skin to skin. He could feel the faint rhythm of Draco’s rapid pulse. Could feel the barest pressure of Draco tapping against his leg under their palms.

“I’ve been afraid,” Neville said, before he could convince himself not to. “For you.”

“Don’t,” Draco whispered, staring transfixed at their hands. “You can’t—”

“Since that night,” Neville went on, his throat tight. “Since I waited for you. Draco . . . I’ve wanted—”

“Please don’t say it.”

“I’ve _missed_ —”

The door materialized in the stone.

Neville gripped Draco’s hand in paralyzing fear as it immediately swung open, and a wave of black swooped in, and a voice was frantically saying, “What are you doing? Why haven’t you responded to your Summons? He is not pleased that you’re—”

Severus Snape stood dumbstruck in the doorway of his storeroom. He stared at Draco, then at Neville, then at their hands still clasped tightly between them.

Neville prepared to die.

It was the only possible way he could see himself leaving this situation, where Draco’s trembling hand rapidly twitched under his own, and their knees were touching, and Snape glared at them with the fiercest, blackest gaze Neville had ever seen in his life.

He could hear Draco shaking, practically gasping for breath.

Then, to his utter astonishment, Snape’s expression changed in an instant, and he only looked terribly afraid. Somehow, that was even worse.

“You need to go. Now,” Snape said, speaking only to Draco. 

Snape’s words from seconds ago suddenly clicked in Neville’s mind, and he leapt to his feet in shock, staring down at Draco’s pale face.

“You were being _Summoned_?” he gasped. He couldn’t help but stare at Draco’s covered arm.

Draco gazed up at him with lost eyes, speechless and unmoving. His right hand was still awkwardly held out where Neville had been holding it.

Rage burned Neville’s skin. Rage and panic. “You . . . is that why you looked like you were in pain? Draco, that was _ages_ ago. What the fuck are you—why didn’t you immediately leave and—”

“Your father has assured the Dark Lord that you are on your way, as has your mother, but their excuses will not hold much longer,” Snape broke in, almost calmly from the doorway. “I highly suggest that you leave. Now.”

Unlike Neville’s frantic yelling, Snape’s cold voice seemed to break Draco out of his frozen fog.

He came alive and rose to his feet, staring down at the floor as he quickly adjusted his robes. Something about his face looked grey, almost dead. He didn’t even look sad, or angry. He wouldn’t look Neville’s way.

“Draco,” he tried, his heart pounding like mad, not giving a shit that Snape was mere steps away. “Is this—are you going—you’ll be there for the whole break? At the manor? When will you—”

A jar was suddenly being pressed into Neville’s hands. He grabbed it on instinct, then looked down to see the rest of the dittany cradled against his stomach.

“It’ll scar if you don’t do one more treatment,” Draco said, in a voice that was so flat it filled Neville with more spine-numbing fear than any Death Eater ever had. Than the Dark Lord himself.

“Draco, wait,” Neville called as Draco brushed past, not meeting his eyes, even though he’d been yelling at him for not leaving sooner just seconds before. “Please . . .”

Snape stepped aside as Draco got to the door to let him pass, then Draco paused. He looked back once over his shoulder with dull, black eyes, staring at a spot just above Neville’s head.

“Would’ve been nice,” he said, in a soft, lifeless voice.

Then he was gone.

Snape halted Neville with his hand as Neville blindly rushed toward the door.

“I don’t need to elaborate on what will happen if he is any later than he is,” Snape hissed.

Neville stumbled back, the world around him reeling like an endless, dark void. All at once, it occurred to him that he was alone in a room with a Death Eater (a _different_ Death Eater), and no one knew where he was to come to his aid. His mouth was very dry, and he felt panic fluttering at the edges of his mind.

He thought about grabbing his wand, reaching for his coin, sprinting past him out the door—

“You’ll find that Miss Weasley is quite correct in her suspicions regarding myself,” Snape drawled, seeming to tower over Neville even though they stood eye-to-eye.

Neville felt himself blanch. “What are you—?”

“And I suggest,” Snape continued, in a much quieter voice, sharp like a knife, “that your grandmother do something about the pathetic excuses for wards surrounding her house.”

“My—my gran—?”

Snape grabbed a handful of Neville’s robes and suddenly yanked him through the door before he could finish. Neville tripped and slammed head-first into the opposite wall of the damp, black hall.

“You will die if I ever find out you have come back to this place,” Snape said, crossing his arms over his chest like an impenetrable tower in the doorway. 

Then, as Neville blinked, the door transformed back into stone, sealing Snape off from view in a rushing clap of magic.

And Neville was alone.

 

\--

 

Later, much later, after what felt like hours blinking in the pitch dark, Neville found himself walking very slowly back to the Room. 

He turned the final corner into the corridor of tapestries, his eyes dull and burning and his stomach in an icy knot. 

And he was so lost to the world that he almost didn’t notice leaves brushing against his face.

But when he _did_ notice, and he reached up numbly to catch the sprig of dittany in his fingers, he felt like he was watching someone else hold the transfigured parchment in their palm.

He felt like he was spying, reading over someone else’s shoulder, as he unrolled the scroll standing in the middle of the hallway, not even trying to hide.

It took him three tries to actually read what it said:

_I won’t be coming back._

_I’m sorry._

_I tried._

Neville cradled his palms so that the withered leaves wouldn’t fall to the floor. He kept them there, not shoving them down into his pockets.

Immediately, he turned away from the corridor with the Room and made his way to Gryffindor Tower instead. He didn’t know whether he passed anyone on the way there. If anyone he knew tried to say hello. If a guard halted his path.

But he did know when he finally ascended the top of the stairs and pushed open the doors into an empty dormitory. He knew that Seamus and Dean would be spending their last night before Break in the Room, like everyone had already planned.

So Neville carefully held the handful of leaves in his palm. He kicked off his shoes and dropped his outer robe to the floor. 

Then he climbed straight into Harry Potter’s bed, between the sheets. He drew the curtains closed around him with a murmured spell. And he lay down, his cheek pressed into Harry’s stale, clean pillow. He let the leaves scatter across the red and gold silk.

He didn’t let himself cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Yes, I know how the morsmordre canonically works but this is fic and we can do whatever we want so forgive me my magical falsehoods).
> 
> I PROMISE THIS HAS A HAPPY ENDING. They will kiss and bang and cuddle and all the rest. Your comments on this fic have meant the world to me. It's been worlds of fun diving into this ship and world with you all, and I'm super grateful.
> 
> Next time: After Easter Break, Neville finds a way to be outdoors again for the first time in weeks. He sees someone (because of course he sees someone).
> 
> THEN AFTER THAT IS THE BATTLE. I'M FUCKING EXCITED. ARE YOU FUCKING EXCITED?!?

**Author's Note:**

> Dreville is your one true OTP now, right? Right?!?!
> 
> (K yeah, maybe not yet. But just wait till they ARGUE and KISS and SHARE THEIR FEELINGS)


End file.
